Child's Play
by Zayz
Summary: LJ eventually. "This is your life, Lily. Yours. Live it as you want, but know, this is reality you're in. It's not child's play anymore, and it never will be." R&R?
1. PROLOGUE

**A/N: Okay…so originally, this fic was supposed to be a one-shot. However, when I found my stride and got the whole thing written, it was 23,000 words. Ouch.**

**After consulting my too-brilliant beta, HPOBSESSEDRISSA (who so patiently and bravely attacked that monstrous one-shot for me just because I asked her to), I've decided to break up that one-shot into a mini-fic because it's overwhelming all at once.**

**So, here it is – the work of tireless weeks split up for your reading convenience. Read, enjoy, and ****please**** remember to review.**

* * *

_"Don't make someone your everything; because once they're gone, you'll have nothing."  
-- Anonymous_

* * *

To most, love is the greatest treasure mankind possesses – what separates us from any other animal (or species) in the world.

Love is supposed to be a renewal, a splash of cold water on a feverish face, because it is the one thing that reminds us all of our capabilities and our fears, our highs and our lows. It's the one thing that binds us together as human beings. Without it, we would surely all be in chaos.

For the longest time, I've been told that love is the most beautiful thing that can happen to anyone, but I don't know if I believe that much anymore.

My own experience is quite inimitable, to say the very least. Love is what winds me up, what keeps me awake at night, what unearths hidden blemishes in a nature that I thought I knew very well.

Michael Davies once told me he loved me, and his declaration became my undoing.

It was at that precise moment, immediately following his intimate confession, that I realized I knew absolutely nothing about how to love someone.


	2. Dating

**A/N: This is kind of like my background, setting the scene that I am going to obliterate. Don't worry if you're confused on where I'm going, it's not difficult once the story progresses.**

* * *

"_I don't want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally."  
-- Zelda Fitzgerald_

* * *

After fifth year – the turbulent, furious, instinct-fueled fifth year – the start of last year, sixth year, felt quiet. So, so quiet.

James Potter, the bane of my youthful existence, finally backed off and began dating Georgina Clark, who might still be his girlfriend to this day. He's unnecessarily quiet, his pranks becoming less and less frequent all the time, and for this and a few other related qualities, he's transformed into a different person.

Severus Snape, my very first friend (the only one from my comparatively innocent childhood still left in my life) backed off as well, immersing himself in the Dark Arts and simultaneously breaking my heart with his emotional distance.

There was no more tension, no more arguments, no more worrying and screaming and crying and _feeling_. There was nothing to dread, nothing to care about, nothing to make my blood go cold or far too hot.

Life was moving along, but after the spitting wildfire of fifth year, this gentle flame that could have been on a scented candle was unbearably slight. It was both the best and worst thing that could've happened to me – me, the biggest spark of the lot when hormones and tension used to get the best of us.

I felt lost. That was the truth of the matter – because I _was_ lost.

Nothing was the same. No _one _was the same. Even I went through some kind of transformation, and that scared me more than I could ever have vocalized to anyone.

It was when the wind began to grow nippier and less friendly against my bare ankles; when the leaves began to color bronze like rusty relics; when the evening sky coaxed its way into the late afternoon sunshine; when my frequent walks by the lake became fewer; when warm cloaks smelling like old memories came out of trunks; that was when I knew something was changing deep inside of me.

My best friend in the world, Ainsley Catherwood, was obviously quite worried about me during that time. Of course, she didn't say so in many words – Ainsley's not very vocal about tender emotions, unless someone (usually myself) pries them out of her with extremely tactful questioning – but I could tell by the way she'd sometimes join me on my walks, squeezing my hand and giving me her worldly opinions on life in general.

I was sure Ainsley knew exactly how I'd been feeling. She'd been feeling it too. She told me so, claiming the year to be "dull" and the boys "resembling their ancient ape ancestors more and more."

She was bored, restless, and terribly sick of Sirius Black, who still tried occasionally to flirt with her and to very awkward (and frequently painful) results.

She wanted to get out of her mundane rut, and as the season and weather began to transform, I – and we – began to do so as well.

--

Dating Michael Davies, I think lazily as I relax in Michael's lap in the common room tonight while he studies his Transfiguration book in silence, is probably one of the smartest things I've ever done.

Ainsley certainly didn't approve of it when we began dating last February, during the unsteady darkness that we refer to sixth year. She hates Michael. But the sad thing about that is she hates him for the very reasons I love him – for being the exact opposite of me.

When James and I wordlessly established a cool and cordial distance from each other since that September in sixth year, I'd been really moody. Moody, disorganized, hasty – all the things I've tried not to be my whole life.

It extended to the point where I was almost like a different person. Up until the end of fifth year, I was intense, okay, but there was still an innocence to the way I did things – a naturalness, a brightness, a quirky reserve of energy that would never be quenched by that equally passionate sod Potter who took such pleasure in ruining my day.

But when all that ended with a bang on that summer's day gone so wrong, my childishness ended with it; I was a darker version of the girl I'd always been, and that darkness, that iciness no one was used to seeing from me, scared even Ainsley.

She thought I was depressed, but that wasn't it. I was just wallowing, giving up, trying to find myself again in the rubble of that awful year. I was immersed, so sick of myself and the whole world that I didn't know what to do with either.

So much energy in one person, yet I had nothing to do with it. It's enough to drive anyone off a cliff.

That's why I dated Michael in the first place – the reason I picked him out and made him mine. With all my unstable demons, his sweetness and musty sunshine was the only thing to bring me out of the hormonal crevices I was drowning in. I was confident that of all people, he could bring me back to the light; and he did.

Ainsley, as aforementioned, doesn't like his lightness. She doesn't like how he adores me, touches me, loves me with smiles and kisses. She doesn't appreciate his virtuousness, how mellow he is, how much he likes to read and study. She thinks he's too much of a pedestrian for me. She believes that I deserve more – namely, she believes I deserve James.

I disagreed. I never thought I deserved James. James was so emotionally powerful in his own bewildering ways, his passion bursting through like rain from a cloud, and I had never been able to bear him for that.

He challenged me. Even when he didn't know who I was, he pegged me down from the start, and he imposed himself into my life, his unbridling knack of figuring a person out included.

I couldn't handle it as a kid, and in sixth year, I was too psychologically fragile to try. Now that we are in seventh as Heads that are still sort of emotionally distant, and old scars are finally beginning to heal, my old peace creeping into my life because of Michael's steady hand on my back, I don't _want _to try.

I love Michael. I love that he goes on walks with me in the evenings, sits under the stars with me and basically enjoys the silence with me; how he kisses me so sweetly when he thinks I need his comfort. I love that he helps me with my homework, never tests my patience, and takes the pace I want to take.

But, most of all, I love that there's no formality about us; nothing to prove, nothing to show him, nothing to strive for him to see like there was with James. We can sit here like we are now, boy and girl who care rather than boyfriend and girlfriend, with my head on his collarbone thinking about how problematical I am while he reads a book – oblivious but still here, a ground for me to lie back on when my well-worn wings finally fall short and fail me like I knew they eventually would.

--

"Hey Lily?"

Michael's voice breaks my reverie about an hour later – break being the understatement of the year, of course.

Jumping violently in his lap, my mind traveling back to my head at a frightening speed and forcing me to take a moment to blink several times, I turn to look into Michael's amiable, waiting face.

"Yes, Michael?" I say.

"It's nine," he says, gesturing to his watch. "I wanted to go to bed earlier than usual tonight – I couldn't sleep much yesterday."

"Neither could I," I say, groaning. "Damned Transfiguration essay."

Michael smiles, but says, "Yeah, you know the one. So I wanted to ask – are you going to be down here a bit, or will you come upstairs?"

I consider this. "I'll come up. Ainsley's been in the dormitory all evening, might as well join her if you're going to sleep on me."

Ignoring the slight on himself, Michael inquires in a tone that suggests he can't resist wondering it, "So was Ainsley actually doing her homework, since she's been in her dorm for several hours?"

I let out an explosive sort of snortle – a mix between a snort and a chortle – and look at him funny. "Michael, do you honestly believe Ainsley Catherwood is doing her homework up there?"

"Well, no," Michael admits sheepishly, "but I thought I'd be confident. You know, for her sake."

"Not with homework, darling, I thought you knew that." I laugh, and give him a soft kiss on his lips. "No, she's probably upstairs doing something crazy, as usual. I'd better go check on her – nothing's blown up yet and I want to make sure it stays that way."

"Fine with me." Michael kisses me again, and then wriggles to get me off his lap, playfully smacking my bum when I'm off. Then he stretches and gathers up his books from the table next to me.

"Night, Lils," he says affectionately, this time kissing my forehead. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Okay." I smile just as affectionately back at him, and follow him up the stairs, although I must branch off to the right rather than the left to get to the girl's dormitory. I open the door to mine, and when I walk in, I immediately feel something that has the speed of a bullet whiz past my head and miss me by centimeters.

"Watch out there, Lily!" I hear Ainsley call out impatiently. "You could've knocked and maybe I wouldn't have shot that one."

"What _was _it?" I wonder, my heart racing.

"A cherry seed," Ainsley says, grinning with her red-lined lips and gesturing to an enormous bowl of cherries sitting beside her.

"Do I want to know?" I ask, smiling uncertainly as I sit on my bed.

"Yes, you do," Ainsley confirms. "See, in Transfiguration, McGonagall is trying to get us to master that spell that makes oranges, right?"

"Yes…" I agree slowly, my eyes narrowed as I survey my friend with a slight frown on my face.

"Right, well, when I do it, I always make cherries," Ainsley continues. "It's bloody annoying, and McGonagall wants fucking _oranges_, not _cherries_; but no matter how hard I try, I can't do it. So, as a way to practice, I've been working on the charm all night, but only to get some red-orange-ish cherries. And, the only thing you can do with cherries is eat them, a notion to which I am obliging happily. They're pretty damn good cherries, actually."

"All right, point somewhat accepted," I say, fighting the urge to laugh. "But what's with shooting seeds at innocent people walking into the dormitory?"

"Oh, well, that was just a badly aimed one that inconveniently occurred when you were walking in," Ainsley says dismissively. "See, while munching on my endless supply of mutant cherries, I decided to work on my aim."

"Your aim?"

"Cherry-seed-spitting aim," Ainsley clarifies, beaming with pride. "I put up some balloons I got from Zonko's that can grow to massive proportions, and I'm sitting here trying to spit seeds at them and pop them!"

She gestures to the wall, which is littered with broken balloons. "The only bad thing about this is I'm getting really good at my little game; so I need to run into Zonko's next time I'm in Hogsmeade for restocking purposes."

I snort, and look at her wondrously. "Ainsley, you are something else."

"Better than being like everyone else." She shrugs and picks up another cherry; she sucks on it for a moment, and then with astonishing rapidity, she shoots it at the wall of dead balloons. The final one that had somehow survived the crossfire finally dies with a resounding pop, and Ainsley cackles from her bed.

"Excellent!" she says, thrusting her fist in the air in celebration. "Did you see the speed I got on that sucker? _Brilliant_!"

I snort, but lay back on my pillows, crossing my legs, and grin. "Nice one, Ains."

"Thanks." Ainsley gives one last friendly smile to her wall full of popped balloons before lying back like me, her stance completely relaxed. "So…what were you up to all evening while I was being a balloon murderer?"

"I was downstairs with Michael," I say. "He was reading and I was just…enjoying his company. It was a nice break – it's been a nightmare this past week with all the homework and Head stuff in the background."

Ainsley nearly releases a snot rocket for the enormous snort she gives me to this statement. "If you wanted a break, you should've come to me instead of hanging out with Monotonous Michael."

Monotonous Michael is Ainsley's favorite nickname out of the many she has given my unfortunate boyfriend. I throw a pillow at her for her insubordination.

"Ha. Ha. I'm very amused, Ains, but there's only so much you can do for me," I tell her.

Ainsley throws the pillow back at me – landing it on my face since her sense of aim is so well improved tonight – but giggles. "Rubbish. I'll do whatever I have to do to keep you away from that Ickle Goody Two-Shoes, Lils."

"Forget it," I say, stretching out and yawning. "I love Michael, and you can't stop me."

"Not to say I haven't tried, but no, I don't think I can," Ainsley says, scowling. "I'm sorry, Lily, but if you _have _to have a boy on your arm, at least make him worthwhile. Michael just…isn't it."

"Well, I think you ought to leave that to _me _to decide," I say stoutly, getting up and lingering by the door, since I'll need to leave to get to my own dormitory. "I need an early night though – are you going to let me go, or will you keep annihilating your balloons?"

"Nah, I'll go to sleep," Ainsley says, bouncing up from her bed to get her own nightclothes. "I'm already out of balloons. No point staying up if I don't have anything else to pop."

"Aren't you going to take those down?" I ask, nodding towards the rather forlorn-looking balloon carcasses.

Ainsley considers this a moment, and then shakes her head. "Nah. If it bothers someone, they can take it down themselves."

I snort, but retire to the bathroom to change and go to bed. This means some other girl will probably have to take down the balloons myself in the morning, when Ainsley is still asleep – it won't take much more than a wave of a wand, but regardless…

I bound down the stairs and out of the Portrait, running down to my special Portrait where my dormitory is located. James is already asleep there, so I climb quietly into bed, my mind whirling. Tomorrow, I've got patrol, and I need to be prepared for it.

I think about reading a book to put me to sleep, but to my partial surprise, my eyes shut for good the moment my head hits the pillow, and for a few blissfully dark hours, I think no more.


	3. Patrolling

**A/N: Your responses have been awesome; keep them coming!!**

* * *

"_You've been walking,  
You've been hiding,  
And you look half dead half the time.  
Monitoring you, like machines do,  
You've still got it I'm just keeping an eye."_

-- _Imogen Heap, Headlock

* * *

_

In the evening as I dawdle around the common room waiting for James, I ponder how difficult being a Head Girl is when it's James who shares the duties of Head Boy with me.

It's not because the task of keeping up with my homework, boyfriend, and duties is difficult or anything, but because James himself is so difficult for me to handle.

The way we handle ourselves in public is more than I could have dreamed, with our cool aloofness that doesn't suggest anything about our previous history and the easy way with which we orchestrate our responsibilities.

We speak softly, never talk about our love lives, and avoid disagreements like the plague. We work perfectly, a well-oiled machine, and it's impossible to connect us back to the unruly kids we used to be.

But, in a way, that's what makes this all so difficult.

So much – too much – between us remains unsaid, unspoken, buried and dismissed because we don't want to deal with it. It's like cramming a particularly unpleasant chore to the bottom of the list again when it comes up; it's possible to evade it, but not forever.

It's always there; an undertone to every word we say to each other, a shadow to every smile we give, a particle in the thick air that cloaks us sometimes when we can't think of anything to say.

It's the wall between us, what keeps us from being anything more than this stiff, overly-formal acquaintanceship we've forged – this final piece of the other that we hold inside of us, this unpleasant blotch in our records.

Taking it easy was part of the contract we laid down for each other the first minute we discovered who the other Head was. Although to me, that promise felt temporary, a weak link to keep us going until we were ready to make the more permanent decisions that solidified what we wanted to be for the other person.

Apparently James doesn't feel the same way, and I don't know what to make of it, although I know better than to just randomly bring it up in the middle of conversation.

We're at a deeply set impasse here, despite our surface-level camaraderie, and each day that passes brings us closer to our breaking point. We've been nothing but colliding hurricanes across the murkiest teenage ocean for as long as I can remember.

To me, it feels like we're in the eye of the storm, and I can't say how long it will be until we plunge back into our passionately turbulent relationship again, fighting and hurting and clawing like we always used to do.

The only questions that remain are when we're going to have to finally face our pasts, and how in the name of Merlin we plan to resolve them.

I walk around the empty room half-lit by the dying fire in the hearth, my fingers skimming across the tops of the sofa cushions. So many days, I wish I could find the courage to bring up those taboo topics we prefer to side-step in our civilized conversations, find the courage to dig up the dirtier issues we never wanted to talk about – because if we did decide to finally do something right, it would perhaps put us at peace, let us truly move on from the memory of the other at long, long last.

My relationship with James has always been so messy. I keep fantasizing that the final discussion, our careful untangling of all our complicated strands with our adult, clear-eyed viewpoints, will fix everything and allow me to be _me_ again.

But, when James now appears at the Portrait Hole, shattering my musings by announcing his presence and asking me to come with him for patrolling, I smile and find that I can't lay things down to rest.

I can't untangle…I can't be honest…I can't fix what I wanted to fix because I won't even take the first step, which is simply saying, "Hey, Potter, could I possibly have a word?"

All I say when we reach the hallway together, a no-nonsense distance between us, is: "Evening, Potter. How's life?"

--

Patrolling with James, thankfully, has become easy business for me.

We talk lightly about whatever is on our minds, the perfect vision of friendliness. Tonight, for example, James talks excitedly about the chances he thinks Gryffindor has of winning the Quidditch cup at the end of the year. As a proud Captain, he has a lot of big plans for the team. I listen on while he eagerly shares tactics with me, using his hands and getting very involved with his complicated explanations.

Sure, I barely understand a word he's saying, but it still makes him happy to have someone to vent to every night. I can live with that.

"I'm really training Victor Elkhart up for this match," James is telling me, referring to his gifted third-year seeker. "He's good, but he doesn't have _endurance_, you know? I keep him after, and he complains that I work him too hard, but I know it's for the greater good. He's only a kid, I know, but he simply doesn't understand how much he could be if he wanted to work."

"He _is _still only a kid – so lighten up on him," I suggest. "He won't be able to perform his best if you put pressure on him during practice all the time."

"He has potential and he knows it; his problem is that he's damn lazy," James tells me. "So I'm making sure he lives up to it, because that potential is the only reason I kept him on the team."

"Sounds a little like you then," I point out lightly, with a bit of a grin.

However, despite my harmless intent, James looks very curiously at me, his hazel eyes cloudy with his misunderstanding. "What do you mean, he sounds a little like me?" he asks – no, nearly _demands_.

"Well, the whole thing about potential," I say innocently, my brow slightly furrowed as I survey him back. "You had potential too – but you were lazy. You preferred to play pranks instead of doing your homework. But, the teachers kept their faith in you, because they figured you'd realize how much you could do if you cared enough to."

James takes this in, his expression unchanging from his initial bewildered deliberation, seeming to accept my opinions. "I suppose you're right," he acknowledges as we turn a corner together. "I didn't really think of it that way."

"Well, I remember that no matter how many times McGonagall told you to do your work or gave you detentions, you didn't do what she wanted," I say. "She actually only hindered you. You did things your own way and clearly, they kind of worked, because you are now the Head Boy."

"True…" James sounds rather awestruck, to tell the truth. "So you're saying I should back off of Elkhart and let him work it out for himself?"

"Yes," I say simply.

"But what if he doesn't figure it out in time for our match and we don't get the Quidditch cup because of him?" James abruptly wonders, the possibility of this wounding him terribly. "This is my last year at Hogwarts, my last chance to watch us win that thing…I don't want Elkhart to be the reason I have to watch someone else take it…"

"Oh, come on, Potter, don't you trust your Seeker?" I tease. "Have a bit of faith in him, like we all had for you."

James sighs, his hand rumpling his hair. All of a sudden, he looks a little exhausted. "I suppose…I'll try it out for now, and then if he still needs some motivation, I'll keep doing things my way. How does that sound?"

"Sounds fine; you're the Captain after all," I say, smirking.

"Yeah, but you're the oh-so-intelligent Head Girl," James reminds me with a crooked little half-smile in my direction. "Your opinion matters to me."

"Does it?" I give him a crooked little half-smile of my own.

"It always has." James's voice is so serene and natural that he manages to pull this slight off, despite the twisting, uncomfortable trill of my stomach. I do my best to ignore it.

"Well, that's absolutely wonderful, Potter, I'm glad my opinion matters to you," I say, half-jokingly and half-seriously. "If you need any more help, let me know when we patrol, and I'll be sure to give you my two cents about anything you want, yeah?"

"Sounds lovely." James's smile is the tiniest bit mischievous as we turn a corner and his hazel eyes glimmer at me in a way that is so vaguely familiar, like a childhood song long buried in the recesses of my full head. "I'll keep you posted."

"Lovely." I smile and I say no more, trying in vain to get my heart and my stomach to please relax themselves because they're making me nervous.

This isn't the first time my insides have overreacted or the first time we've had a light, kind-of-meaningful banter during our patrols. Everything has happened before. We have done much worse, actually, and yet I can't help but feel like an errant schoolgirl with overactive hormones whenever I am around him. It doesn't make any sense to me.

We've been on even footing thus far this year and I'm so grateful for it. James could have been a nightmare if he wanted to be, but he's been excellent about giving me space, being cordial, not bringing up unwanted topics when I can't handle them. It's me who's doing the misbehaving in the head and that worries me so much more than I can ever say.

So, I change the subject after a few moments of contented quiet, and James follows along like a dream, not at all the rebellious and commanding child he was once prone to being. He's grown up nicely, I can't help but notice – emotionally, and even physically.

Being Head Girl with him kind of reminds me of going to the dentist – horribly scary at first, but not at all scary after coming out.

In fact, it comes to the point where going is just another part of the day, another journey that must be taken – a journey that has a scenic view on the way that somehow makes it even better than the trips that were supposedly fun in the past:

Who would have thought?

--

My mind has been so utterly full lately that a few days later, when I walk into the common room late at night, the sight of Michael unusually waiting for me scares the living daylights out of me.

Coming into the Portrait Hole, I almost fall right back out of it. Thankfully, I don't because a grinning Michael grabs my hand and pulls me back in, as he's so good at doing. He's amused to see me so out of sorts.

"Hey, Lils, you okay?" he asks me, planting a particularly sweet kiss on my lips. "You've got raccoon eyes, you look so worn out."

"Do I?" I crane my neck to look for the nearest mirror.

"Yeah, a little." He strokes my cheek. "Is everything all right?"

I yawn. "Yes, yes, everything is fine," I say, smiling at him as he slips his arm around my waist. "It's the patrolling…otherwise, I'm all good. Honest."

"You should take a break one day," Michael advises me, taking me up the stairs. "Like, ask Potter to do the patrolling so you can catch up on your sleep. This isn't good for you."

"Potter is every bit as tired as I am, Michael," I say with another punctuating yawn. "We handle it. But you're right; if it gets to a point where I'm dead on my feet, yes, I'll ask him to do it for me once."

"Good for you, Lil." He smiles and kisses me again.

"Hey, what's up with you, Mike?" I ask as we reach the landing that leads to his dormitory, since mine is on the opposite end of the floor. "You're extra gooey today, and you stayed up all the way until now, just to see me in. Am I missing something?"

Michael's enigmatic smile lights up. "Well…now that you mention it, today _is _our one-year anniversary. You asked me out today – last year."

"Did I really?" I'm dazed with fatigue. "What is today?"

"February twenty-sixth," Michael announces proudly.

"Huh, that's interesting." I try to smile, but Michael just leans in and gives me a kiss.

"Yeah, isn't it?" He strokes my nose. "Come on, we can go to my dorm and celebrate, if you'd like. I managed to snag some pumpkin juice from dinner, in case you wanted anything after your patrol."

"You know, pumpkin juice sounds heavenly right about now," I say, grinning. "Let's go."

"Sure thing," Michael says, opening the door to his dormitory and letting me in. He makes no move to be silent as he steps inside, putting on the lamp on his bedside for a flicker of light in the room. The only sounds I hear are the heavy breathing of boys fast asleep. Not wanting to wake them up, I tiptoe in as quietly as I can, but Michael laughs at me.

"These boys can sleep through anything," he assures me at a regular volume. "You don't have to worry. You could blow something up in here and they wouldn't even turn over."

I giggle, comforted, and walk over normally, sitting on his bed with him as he dispenses us both a glass of pumpkin juice. He gives it to me and I chug it down gratefully, the cool liquid trickling invitingly down my parched throat. Michael has to refill my glass with a chuckle a few seconds after pouring it.

"Thirsty, Lils?" he inquires, his blue eyes bright with humor.

"Merlin, I wonder what gave me away." I smile as I take another hearty sip and put the glass on his table. "But yeah, I was – although I do feel miles better already."

"Wonderful." Michael drains his own glass and sets it beside mine, and lies back on his pillow, gesturing for me to curl in next to him. I do so with pleasure, my body matching up with his exquisitely as he begins absently twirling my red curls between his fingers.

We don't feel the need to say anything as we relax, staring at the ceiling and content with the other, but after a bit, Michael does inform me, "You've got beautiful hair, Lils."

"Thanks." I tug on a lock of his short hair. "So do you."

Michael laughs, in a particularly good mood tonight, and then he grazes his lips over mine again – a chaste, friendly kiss that soothes me rather than incites my senses. I like it, and I return it, as I snuggle in closer to him.

"You smell like peppermint," I note as I sniff his neck. "Did you know that?"

"No, I didn't." Michael flashes me a smile. "But now I do."

I yawn for the third time this evening, and swing my leg over both of his. "I don't want to move and go to my Head dormitory," I complain. "Do you mind if I sleep over tonight? As an anniversary present?"

"Yeah, that's fine." Michael kisses the top of my head and gestures around at the sleeping boys. "They won't care. Girls sleep over here all the time."

"I can imagine." I sigh, and breathe in Michael's peppermint smell, not as relaxed as I want to be. "Thanks, Michael."

"No problem, Lily." He holds me closer. "Anything for my girl."

I smile and let my eyes flicker shut, knowing he means to be affectionate when he says this, but somehow, it still hits me like a good Disarming Spell, like the wrong note in a symphony. He doesn't notice my anxiety as he kisses me one last time and claims to be going to sleep without changing his clothes, but I know it's there, eating away at my intestines, as I lie awake much longer than I would've thought, considering how tired I had been a few minutes ago.

_Anything for my girl_.

We've been dating a year but somehow, I don't think of myself as Michael's girlfriend. I think of myself as a close friend, bordering on girlfriend but not quite because of all our relaxed intimacy…does he consider me his fully-fledged girlfriend? And if he does, how do I feel about it?

This simple, four-word sentence opens up such a huge array of possibilities as to where Michael and I could be going in our relationship that it makes my head spin. I go to sleep as quickly as possible, not wanting to dwell on it, but I wonder anyway…wonder what I mean to him, wonder what I represent to him, wonder what _he _represents to _me_ when all I'd really wanted was someone near to lean on…

I sigh in the darkness, unable to move because Michael is already so deeply asleep and his hold on me is tight, and I shut my eyes against myself, hoping against hope none of these thoughts plague me again in the morning.

I have a feeling they will; but what can I say? I've always been a bit of an optimist that way.


	4. Trusting

"_We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy."_

_-- Walt Anderson_

* * *

"Are you all right, Evans?"

His voice startles me, as we sit together in an empty classroom the very next afternoon, going over the slips students fill when given detentions together before the Prefects meeting in about an hour. We're supposed to be discussing detention policies according to these slips, because apparently, there has been a significant increase in miscreant behavior among the younger students.

I dunno, it's not very interesting work, and there's not much to discuss but we have to do it anyway.

Because of all this, James hasn't really talked to me much today – a few casual words out of politeness are guaranteed with him, but never much more than that – so I have every right to be slightly confused.

Taking a moment to swallow thickly to relieve my clogged-up throat, I cough for good measure and answer very innocently, "What do you mean, am I all right?"

"It's a courtesy question," James answers lightly, looking up fleetingly and catching my eye before returning to the detention slips. "You looked a little worried when you came in here, so I'm wondering aloud if you're all right."

I did? Merlin, this boy is going to be the death of me with his observational skills.

"Oh," I say, for lack of a more eloquent response.

"Yeah, oh." James looks up properly now and grins at me. "So, answer the question. Are you all right?"

"Erm, yes, I think I am," I say, meeting his gaze and blushing slightly, a few memories of the previous night coming back forcefully to slap me in the face when I least need it. "Thanks for asking."

He nods, his face at peace despite the slightly-too-awkward silence he has managed to initiate, and he writes something on the detention slip he's currently got. Then he laughs.

"What?" I inquire.

"I've found Sirius's detention slip," James informs me, still snorting as he shows it to me. "Check this out."

_Name__: Seriously Black  
__Year__: I'd prefer not to reveal my age to strangers  
__Reason for Detention__: You know, I'm not quite sure. Professor McGonagall was going on about something having to do with not doing my homework, and then out of the blue, she hands me a detention slip, informing me that I need to take things 'seriously'! (Although I don't think the pun was intended, and I didn't point it out to her because her mood was a tad tetchy.) When one gets into trouble, isn't it supposed to be because they _did _something, rather than because they _didn't _do it? Where's the justice in that?!_

I snicker as I return the slip – covered with Sirius's odd, spidery scrawl – and James tucks it away into the finished pile, chuckling away.

"So he didn't do his homework again?" I ask, trying to be polite and make small talk.

"Obviously not." James looks warmly at the pile of slips. "He was in detention with McGonagall finishing it all up. He came out of it grumbling about cramped fingers and a potential case of carpal tunnel syndrome."

"That sounds like Sirius," I say, the smile still on my face as I put another slip away without really taking in what is written.

James continues to smile as well, going through his own stack, and resuming his work with the same quietness we'd been having for the time we've been in the classroom. I, now having nothing else to say, also remain silent, my stomach knotting as strangely as it always does after I have a conversation with James Potter…

And then, all of a sudden, I get the oddest, strongest mental bombshell in the world – for a moment, I am almost irresistibly tempted to tell James everything, tell him how confused I am with my sort-of boyfriend at the moment, because he's the only ear (other than Ainsley) who's available to listen more often than not.

But then I shake myself out of it, wondering how on earth I can be so incredibly brain-dead.

Of course I can't tell _James Potter_, of all people, everything. How can I even let this thought hit me once?

James is my Head Boy, and I haven't forgotten that until it is declared otherwise, he is my ex-enemy of about six years. He used to want to date me himself. Getting cozy and telling him about my troubles with Michael would be a horrible decision.

I don't even know why I was possessed with this strange impulse. But as I look at James again, working so seriously on something we both know isn't worth the trouble, I suppose I _do _know – I want to tell him because lately, I've been mistaking our bond for something closer than it really is.

James simply has this trustworthy, approachable aura to him now that he's become Head Boy. Everyone _loves _him, because they feel like they can tell him anything and he'll listen. It's an easy mistake to make, even for me.

But I need to keep my mouth shut. I know that I have to. If I don't, everything I've worked for – this balance more fragile than a house of cards – will fall apart because of the shove.

And when I can have peace, why would I ever want the chaos I thought I'd left behind forevermore?

--

A couple of days later, I am still not feeling all the way secure about what Michael said to me on the night of our anniversary, for whatever inscrutable reason.

His four words – so simply and fondly spoken late at night – seem to be haunting me, replaying themselves in my head like eternal movie loops, and it's driving me bonkers.

I haven't told anyone about how this is making me feel, least of all Michael, so I decide to turn to the person I trust the most tonight – Ainsley Catherwood.

As we do our homework together in the evening in our empty dormitory on opposite sides atop Ainsley's four-poster, cheerful conversation concerning whatever comes to mind passing like a party favor between us, I decide to bring up my muddled thoughts to her. When Ainsley is humming and enjoying the quiet after I tell her a joke Emmeline Vance shared with me the other day, I make my move.

"Hey, Ains," I say, hoping to sound relaxed and nonchalant, "I have a question for you."

"Yeah, what's up?" Ainsley says, obviously not noticing the slight edge to my voice as she scribbles something down on her parchment.

I moisten my lips with my tongue, and then ask with some hesitation, "Ains, do you think I love Michael?"

Ainsley drops her quill when she hears this question, her expressive gray eyes befuddled and faintly narrowed as she looks at me. "What?"

"I wanted to know, do you think I love Michael, Ainsley?" I repeat, finding it easier to inquire this the second time, now that it's already out in the open between us.

Ainsley looks quite confused as she considers me, her lips doing that funny half-pursed, half-pushed-out thing they do when she's thinking hard. "That's a weird question," she says bluntly. "I mean, if you asked me if I thought Michael loved you, I'd say of course he does…but you're asking me if I think _you _love him."

"Yes," I say. "Like, does it seem that I do, from a somewhat-outsider's opinion? Or does it seem like I'm not interested in being more than a good friend?"

Ainsley stares at me as though I've personally amputated both of my legs. "Erm…I don't know, Lils. I don't pay much attention to how gooey you are over Michael the Mind-Numbing."

"Ains, I'm serious," I plead. "Answer the question. It's important."

"Okay, okay, I'm answering, I promise," Ainsley says hurriedly, disgruntled as she usually is by my wacky requests. "Erm…if you want my perfectly true, one hundred percent truthful answer…"

"Yes, that's the one I want," I assure her.

"Right, so if you want my perfectly true, one hundred percent truthful answer, then it's this," Ainsley says, business-like and thoughtful as she continues to scrutinize me. "I think you _like _Michael, because for some unfathomable reason you think he's a completely wonderful bloke to be around. But if it comes to being an actual couple and _loving _him, I don't think you do. I don't think you ever have."

"Why do you say that?" I ask almost at once, ravenous for detail on my puzzling predicament and her even more puzzling response.

"It's simple," Ainsley says with a shrug, her beautifully big, gray eyes demure. "If a girl loves a guy, she would scratch me across the face by now for constantly making cracks about how she doesn't love him. But, if a girl only likes a guy, she'll take it, because she knows somewhere in her weird head that I'm right. Get it?"

"No," I say slowly. "Because…what if I just never scratched you across the face for making cracks because you're my best friend and I don't want to cause you pain or anything?"

Ainsley snorts. "Do you seriously believe that?"

I exhale both exasperatedly and worriedly. "Maybe not," I say softly.

"Exactly." Now Ainsley's smirk morphs into something a bit kinder as she gives me her comfort look from across her bed. "Look, Lily, I know I rag on you a lot over Michael, but if you really want my opinion, then here it is – I think you and Michael could be good _friend_s, but not a good _couple_."

"Why?" I ask her. "Why can't we be a couple? Why am I not letting us be a couple?"

"Because it's as I keep telling you," Ainsley explains wisely. "You need…_more_. Okay, so maybe Michael was good for you in sixth year, but we're not in sixth year anymore, Lily. You're at the marrying age now. Michael _isn't it_; it's as freaking simple as that."

But it isn't, and I think she knows that, even if she won't say it. So, I bite my lip until it's close to bleeding, all my worries of a few nights ago rushing back to prominence in my head, as my eyes meet the eyes of my best friend, who is watching me as warily as ever. I'm worrying her again; but I can't help myself. I don't know what to do.

So, I do the next best thing – I gently wriggle free of Ainsley's grip, and I pick up my books and dump even my unfinished homework into my book bag, since I plan on finishing it in the morning before class.

Ainsley, following my lead, retreats back to her books to do the same thing. I don't say anything more to her and she knows better than to say anything first. We dump our bags in the corner in silence and go to our respective beds (me crashing temporarily on the one next to Ainsley's), not getting into them but not truly staying awake either.

We simply lie there, close in physical distance but so far away in our heads, and stare around the room aimlessly; reflecting, contemplative, and in my case peculiarly hollow, as we surrender ourselves to the depths of our wandering musings.

Michael's face keeps looming up in my mind, a huge and intimidating figure despite the charm of his bright blue eyes, and I keep getting lost in the most bizarre daydreams. Most of them feature me chasing after Michael and trying to kiss him, to tell him I'm sorry for whatever I've inadvertently done to him.

But whenever I come close enough to touch him, to press my lips against his, he pops into thin air, not to be seen anywhere I look, because he's trying to punish me for something I'm not sure I did.

I can't help but wonder as I shake myself out of my third of these dreams so I can say good-night to Ains and run down to my personal dormitory – is this is a sign of some sort, or is it simply me going barking mad?


	5. Loving

**A/N: Generally speaking, the author gets very, very happy when her readers review the chapters – you know, because regardless of what you say, it's really very polite to leave a comment. So make this adjusting high-school sophomore happy and review this chapter, yeah? It's a tad important.**

**WARNING: Mild scene. Be wary if you're squeamish - although, it's nothing graphic or even that descriptive.**

* * *

"_There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they do for themselves." _

_-- Jane Austen_

* * *

"Hey, Lily? You're doing it again."

"Hmmm?"

I blink a few times, only now realizing that I'm staring out into space again as Michael finishes something up at our favorite table in the Gryffindor common room, something he pointed out to me a few minutes ago much to my discomfiture. Now, he looks at me pointedly and makes me blush.

"Sorry, sorry," I mumble.

"I'm not angry or anything, merely concerned," Michael says, inspecting me with those eyes of his and making me feel like I'm being X-Rayed. "Are you worried about something? You always get like this when you are – distant, and the like."

"No, I'm not worried, just tired," I half-lie, adding in a fake yawn that turns real halfway through for effect. "You know I don't sleep much. Plus, lately, I've started sleeping too lightly, and Potter does snore astonishingly loud in that tiny Head's dorm we share…"

"Shouldn't you poke him or something, to get him to be quiet?" Michael suggest earnestly. "You need your sleep, Lils – you don't look so good."

"Relax, Michael, I'm fine." I smile wanly at him. "Are you done yet? Maybe bed would be a good option for me right about now."

"Yeah, I'm done," Michael says, although I suspect he isn't as he slips his things into his bag and stands up. "Here, give me a kiss and then you can go to sleep for at least a few hours, all right?"

"Sounds good." I smile loosely at him, and allow him to wrap me up securely in his arms, as warm here as I am in a good cloak. He's so worried about me, but he needn't be; it makes me a little uncomfortable, that just a tiny stray in our routine causes him to be so overprotective about me. Last I checked, I was a big girl capable of taking care of herself.

When he kisses me, though, it's nothing compared to his embrace – his lips crash onto mine like they never have before, exploring them and nipping at them in a means so unlike Michael. It's a mix of half-shy, pent-up ardor and plain old fretfulness that startles me and takes me aback. I settle into this new kiss of his, perhaps not willingly but soothingly, to show him everything is okay and he can let me go.

He does, and he holds me maybe a little more snugly than he would any other night as we go up the stairs together, so I can see Michael off and go to bed myself. Once we get to the landing, he props me up gently against the wall and kisses me as forcefully and deeply as he had before, his hands mussing my hair.

For the first time in probably our entire courtship together, Michael is not kissing me out of care, or safety, or simple enjoyment. He is kissing me amorously, as if he wants me in more ways than one tonight, and this more than his kiss makes my breath hitch in my throat.

Michael may have decided that he is ready to take us further, but am _I_? After my loose, uncharacteristic deliberations lately, is it right for me to lead him as I am?

My stomach ruptures with the might of Mount Vesuvius, twisting and writhing as I realize I can't be sure. In all of the relationships I've tried to initiate in my years, I have never been sure. Should I be sure? Is there something wrong with me?

All my unanswered questions swirl around in my head like cream in a well-churned milkshake, profuse on my tongue as Michael penetrates his between my lips, and I can't think. I know that he is fully invested in me, but I don't know if _I _feel the same. Something in the back of my brain tells me that I should – that in normal circumstances, I would feel an incalculable love for Michael rushing through my veins about now, and I don't.

I don't, and it feels wrong.

Yet here I stand regardless, my mouth on Michael's, my arms around his neck, my back against the wall.

He ravages me for a few more minutes here, since it's late and no one is going to be around to see us, when he breaks our kiss, his breathing irregular, and asks me ever so quietly, "Do you want to?"

His voice shakes as he asks the awkward question that is going to change my life as I knew it, but his blue eyes tell me that he does. He wants to; he just needs to make sure I do too. What do I say to that?

We've been dating a year, but I've never actually told him out loud that I loved him. We both kind of assumed it without checking our information, and now it stands as the final barrier between our being a fully committed couple.

Do I, or do I not want to?

Swallowing copiously and with great difficulty, my face cupped inside his quivering hands, I try to let that adoration in his blue eyes give me strength, as I whisper through a mouth that doesn't feel like my own:

"Yes."

--

In a flash, Michael takes me to his dormitory full of boys who are basically dead to the world, and we land on his bed, him on top of me, our breaths intermingling in the dark.

My parted lips are immediately given the weight of his as we kiss once more, my heart beating far too rapidly for my comfort with my stomach doing that annoying twisty thing it does again. There is a lump in my throat, and I'm more than a little nervous, but I voice none of this as Michael relaxes his weight on my body, lips now on my throat.

It is increasingly awkward for me to remove his clothes in the lukewarm heat of this moment, and for him to remove my clothes in return. I am indeed a virgin, but even so, the feeling doesn't look as if it's _right_ to me. I feel cold when I am finally freed of my undergarments.

With the power of a young man waiting too long for his moment, Michael gives his abundant affection to my neck, my collarbones, my shoulders – he is clearly as inexperienced as me, but he doesn't seem to care. He has long chosen me as his first, and now I am; that's all he really needs. Passion is passion, and he has no interest in restraining his.

But, as he continues to kiss me, every part of me, with my hands caressing whatever bit of him I can reach, I feel more and more detached, time becoming disjointed, as if this is a surreal dream I'm indulging in as opposed to a solid reality I am truthfully experiencing.

I can't deny that I enjoy the feeling of being touched, desired, admired; and I am going along with his game with as much life as he has; and if I could leave I don't think I would; but all the same, it doesn't feel like I am _here_ with Michael.

It feels like some other girl who is partially me is here with Michael, making love to Michael; _Michael_, the boy who saved me in sixth year and somehow fell for me when I was broken goods on a shelf. If I had known then what we would be doing now, would I still have asked him out all those months ago?

I close my eyes as his tongue works with uninhibited want on my breasts, my one hand clutching his dirty-blonde locks and my other still stroking the side of his face. There's a sudden activation just behind my navel, making me squirm involuntarily, as he starts only at this point to push into me, firm and puzzling to my mind and body that know nothing about how a man is supposed to feel.

I feel a moan escape my lips like a dying wish, my eyes shut as he pushes again, this time the feeling anticipated. And just like that, Michael feels _realer_ to me now than he ever has before.

He _is _a man, who wants things men want, who is getting those things because he is close to me and I can't find it in me (for reasons I shall probably never know) to refuse him. Even when he held me close all those nights, rubbing my back and twirling my hair and kissing my forehead, he never felt like he does now – this solid _man_ who is with me in a way no one has ever been.

Michael has always been my safe harbor, the physical embodiment of security and casualness and _not-being-a-heavy-couple_. He is more of a pillow to fall back on and now that he's not, I feel unhinged.

Maybe this says something bad about me and how I regard men in my life – as figures for certain feelings, an allegory – but it's true. Michael has never tried to be anything more, and I needed him so much that I didn't ask him to be.

He's holding me, holding me so tightly against his chest that I can hear his heart beat erratically, blending in with the now-shallow patters of my own heart. My skin is peppered with our mixed sweat, my tongue thick and moist in my mouth.

But in me, something is simply too wrong, safe-harbor-turned-human or otherwise. Off – like an apple in a sea of lemons.

I can feel him – his breath in my hair, his hands on my breasts, his legs on mine, every bit of us matching up – but somehow, despite our being laced together here on Michael's bed, I feel worlds away from him.

Disconnected, as though half of me is here with him and the other half is watching, shaking her head, wondering how in the name of Merlin I ended up here.

But, Michael leans down anyway, his sweet face full of so much ecstasy that I myself have triggered in him, and he kisses my neck, inhaling the skin there. And as he nestles into that hollow separating my head from my shoulder, he whispers ever so softly, "I love you, Lily."

I feel these words choke me, clog up my throat like a bad London traffic jam, and I close my eyes, something he mistakes for fervent emotion, because he puts his fingers to my mouth and says in my ear, "You don't have to say anything. Not yet."

Swallowing thickly, I look at him – really, really_ look_ at him – for the very first time, and press my mysteriously numbed and dry lips to his, for lack of any better gesture… because I know that if he hadn't shut me up just now, I would not have had the strength or mind-power to return his remark anyway.

He kisses me back with such relief, with such bliss, with such _tenderness_ on the whole that it makes me ache all over again, shiver slightly against him, only skin and too much thought on my end between us.

And when he breaks this kiss, only to start another almost immediately, I apprehend that I feel oddly barren instead of warm and whole as I should.

Is this normal or customary for a First Time, or have I done something horribly, horribly wrong?

* * *

**A/N: Seriously, I don't think that scene was too bad, but if you think it is, let me know and I'll up the rating.**


	6. Wondering

_Sleep  
I think I will  
Go back to sleep_

_Oh it's so cold and shivery outside my cocoon  
Now I'm on my way_

_-- Imogen Heap, Sleep_

* * *

After what feels like only a few minutes after my eyelids finally droop shut, the first rays of approaching dawn gently cajole me awake, as warm and friendly as a mother's hand on my shoulder.

If I thought I was disconnected from the world of things logical and reasonable last night, it was nothing compared to how I feel now, waking up in a dormitory that I do not know in sheets that are not my own.

I feel hung over, in a way, as I wheedle my way out of Michael's arms and sit up on the mattress, looking around at the pale gold half-light reflected on the room and on the heads of sleeping male teenagers. My lips are swollen, and I'm kind of aching, the bare expanse of my back exposed as the blanket covers my breasts. I vaguely wonder where my clothes are before I see them on the ground, mixed up with Michael's. We must have tossed them there last night when Michael led me up to bed.

I yawn, but it turns into a colossal sigh as I blink a few times and scratch my head. It doesn't feel like I gave Michael my virginity just hours before. I barely feel any different – only a little jostled, like I've gotten off a particularly vicious roller coaster. Am I supposed to feel different?

Moistening my lips with my tongue, I let the chills overtake my naked body. I gently stroke Michael's hair as he lies next to me, so peaceful in his sleep. I don't want to leave him here like this, to let him wake up without me next to him after a night as monumental as the last one. At the same time, I want a shower and some time to myself, maybe a little breakfast with Ainsley before class.

So I make a compromise – I lay back in bed with Michael and stare out the window, watching the sunrise as I sometimes do when I wake up too early, my mind loosely wandering to topics that occasionally have to do with Michael. But, when the sun is most of the way up in the sky, I pry myself away from Michael a second time and dress before any of the other boys can wake up, stealing out of the dormitory and the common room to get to my own bathroom.

James is still mercifully asleep when I creep in and do my morning routine in the bathroom; I'm grateful, because I don't particularly want to explain where I've been all night. I get ready and put Michael out of my mind for the moment, because when I'm so sensitive, like the lightest whisper of a breath will knock me over irretrievably, I don't want to feel the things I might feel if I open up.

All I need is a morning of normality. That's it. _Then _maybe I'll consider being introspective and figuring my next move.


	7. Questioning

"_And it's beginning to get to me  
That I know more of the stars and sea  
Than I do of what's in your head  
Barely touching in our cold bed._

_-- Snow Patrol, It's Beginning to Get to Me

* * *

_

When I'm dressed and ready and as close to normal as I'll ever be, it's time for me to meet Ainsley in the Great Hall for breakfast. I wonder indistinctly if Michael will be there – but I figure it won't matter if he is or not. I'll be fine either way.

It turns out though, as I locate Ainsley and sit with her at the long Gryffindor table, Michael isn't here for breakfast. He's notorious for not liking breakfast, so maybe he's skipping it. That would make sense.

Even Ainsley notices his lack-of-presence when I greet her and pour myself some orange juice while she goes medieval on the sausages. This is made obvious after a couple sausages, when she asks me, casual as anything, "So where's Michael the Unbearable?"

My stomach tightens weirdly at the mention of Michael, but I answer her back coolly, "I don't know. He didn't mention not coming to breakfast today."

"Ah, well, maybe it's just our lucky day," Ainsley says, grinning.

I busy myself by drinking my orange juice, hoping the blush hasn't come to my cheeks as I fear it has; even though Ainsley is my very best friend in the world, and I would trust her with my life, I don't want to tell her about what Michael and I did.

I don't want to tell _anyone _about what we did because it's simply too personal. Nobody has to know about it besides us, right? Do people usually tell their friends about their sex lives? I don't think they do. Who would want to know and _why_?

I'm too new to this. I'm keeping my mouth shut.

However, when I lower my glass, a confused Ainsley looks and sees me blushing right away, her gorgeous gray eyes wide with her bewilderment.

"Hey, Lils, are you all right? You're supposed to be slapping me for my insubordination, not blushing," she says.

It's absolutely unfair how beautiful she can look while she's interrogating me, even if she's got sausage all over her mouth.

"I don't slap you unless I'm trying to wake you up, Ains," I say, tactfully avoiding her question.

She notices. "True enough, but seriously, are you all right? You look all…fidgety. Did I say something wrong?"

Somehow, I don't think Ainsley would care if she did, but she asks anyway because she's truly curious about the way I'm acting. And here I'd been trying to blend in so she wouldn't pick up on it.

"No, nothing's wrong," I say, my voice maybe a little too high for comfort. "I'm totally fine. Are you done with your sausages? Can we go to class?"

Ainsley stuffs another whole sausage into her mouth and spends a few minutes with her cheeks looking like balloons, her well-trained jaws mercilessly chomping the meat until she can give it a massive swallow. "Yeah, I think I'm done," she says, pushing away her empty plate. "But are you sure you're all right? You know you can tell me anything – even if it's something nasty, like Michael the Soulless putting his paws all over you at night."

Oh, if she only knew what a good guesser she is – even if she's joking.

I sigh, though, and I say, "Yeah, I know. But there's nothing to tell right now. Really."

Ainsley decides to buy this, and shrugs as we both stand up, slinging our bags over our shoulders and starting our epic journey to first period. "Okay, if you say so," she says.

"Thanks." I manage a smile and squeeze her hand for a moment before changing the subject to something easier, lighter. Ainsley, with one last glance at me, goes along with it, and we make it to first period joking and giggling like the girls we are.

Michael isn't here yet either, but we have a few minutes yet before the period starts. I sit at the double-table we share, and Ainsley goes to hers, and we wait; she with boredom and I with anticipation to the bizarre day I feel sure is coming ahead.

--

Michael and I spend the day together in class and during lunch the way we normally do, with not much stray in our routine – something that bothers Ainsley as much as it does on any other day, but bothering _me _more than I would have bargained for.

Now that I've seen him in a state no one has ever seen him before, I look at him with new eyes, kiss him with new lips, touch him with new hands. It's like I never knew him, never understood him, as we do the things we always do – touching in the hallways, rubbing elbows when we take notes, kissing outside the classrooms for a couple of extra seconds before going in.

Has he been like this since we started dating, or is it just me being paranoid?

When he smiles that smile he knows I love, his blue eyes alight with happiness, I find myself responding with a less sincere smile of my own. It's a change he doesn't notice but should, according to some instinctual feeling deep in my belly button.

When he kisses me, nipping at my mouth so playfully, he doesn't taste right. Michael has a certain taste, and I get a certain feeling when we kiss, but today, it feels different. I kiss him harder than usual, trying to search it out of him, but I don't find it; and he is only pleased by the extra contact.

His fingers aren't as warm as it usually is when we hold hands. This might simply be because my own body temperature is a little off, but I see this as a sign – a sign that something is honestly and truly _wrong _here.

Not wrong with him, but wrong with me. Michael is a good person, and he didn't put me in any situation to compromise my honor; I was the one who cooperated, he was not the one who forced me to do anything I didn't want to do. That must mean there's some glitch in _me_, a glitch I can't figure out for the life of me – because the moment I'm happy, it seems there has to be a catch.

Am I not allowed to be happy here with Michael? Am I not allowed to settle for what I think is the best thing for me?

And why, after I've finally found some kind of peace to pacify my impatient soul, do I _still _have to get back into that sick circle of uncertainty, dread, and misunderstanding? Or is something normal, better people have to live with too?

--

During patrolling hours about one nerve-racking and uncomfortable week later, James and I are wandering around the fourth floor together, when after a while, he looks sideways at me, and asks me, "So…Lily, are you all right?"

I'm taken by surprise when I look him full on, my expression surely astonished. James hasn't said anything for the past ten minutes or so. It's only natural. "What, sorry?"

"I wanted to know…if you were all right," James repeats quietly, his hazel eyes guarded but inquisitive nonetheless.

"Merlin, why does everyone feel the need to ask me this?" I say, frustrated, my words directed more to myself than to him. "The moment I keep my mouth shut for a few minutes, everybody thinks I'm unstable or something. I don't understand it."

"It's only a courtesy question," James says, like he said the last time. "When someone looks worried, you generally do inquire after their health. Especially if they're your Head Girl and you kind of need her to patrol and go to prefect meetings."

I sigh, catching all the integrated fibers of sincerity and teasing in his tone. "I'm sorry. I know you mean well. I'm just…no, I'm not okay."

"Thought so," James says, his tone the same but his eyes troubled. "Is it something you can tell me about, or not?"

I almost pass out on the spot.

As if I can tell James what's on my mind without being completely and inexcusably awkward!

But, by some means, I manage to keep my composure, and I do my best to give him a smile – a gesture I've been making (much to Ainsley's consternation) quite a lot this week. "No, I don't think so…girl stuff, you know how it is."

"Yeah, I suppose," James says agreeably enough as we walk. "So I'm guessing it's about your boyfriend – Michael Davies, isn't it?"

I gape at him in wonderment. "How did you know?"

James smirks. "Whenever a girl has an issue she won't share with a guy, it's almost always going to be because of another guy. Am I right, or am I right?"

I roll my eyes, but blush and say, "Yes, all right, I'll throw you a bone – you're right. It's about Michael."

"I _knew _it," James says triumphantly, his proceeding laugh hearty. "So…since I've just proven myself to be very clever and I figured out what you were worrying about, am I worthy of details?"

I'm a little startled by James's playfulness on this topic, to be quite honest – sure, he and I are a bit pal-ish, because we're Heads and we've decided to be civil to each other this year for lack of any better course of action, but somehow, I'm a little hurt by his casualness.

There was a time when James Potter claimed to be madly in love with me. He told me he would love me for the rest of his life, love me like no one had loved me before, and he scared away my other boyfriends to prove it. He asked me out, tried his best to listen to my rationality when he itched to be irrational, and paid no attention to his simpering fan-girls when I was in the room. Those days are faraway from me now, but they are still vivid in my mind, because they are the most unusual occurrences I've ever endured in my relatively short life so far.

Even if it's annoying, isn't it second-nature to accept these declarations to be true? After all the love he told me he had for me at the age of fifteen, how can it be gone to the point where he can tease me about my boyfriend when we're seventeen?

It's confusing, and it's a little insulting, but I don't express any of this as I clear my throat, my ears surely an infected-looking red, and say, "No, I don't think these are details I would like to share with you at the present time."

James, oblivious to the unrest he's causing inside me, merely grins and says, "Okay, that's fine. You can tell me another day."

"Maybe I will." I doubt it, but I smile anyway. "Thanks."

"Thanks? What for?" James wants to know. "I didn't even offer you any advice to the worrisome topic you won't tell me about."

"For backing off," I clarify in spite of myself, ignoring the healthy heat coming up to the thin surface of my skin. "For not questioning me as other people might – or as you yourself might have done two years ago."

"Oh…" James trails off here, unsure of how to respond. He looks so naïve here, as he gropes for something else to say in his head; only now do I see that he has indeed grown up very nicely. His frame is sinewy and muscular, his jaw prominent and well developed, his hair artfully messy, his eyes bright and unusually translucent.

He looks almost thirteen again in his innocence, in his awkward stance, and I feel the strangest bubbling sensation starting in my toes and warming up my legs. I don't know how I must be looking at him because of this, but he does go the tiniest bit pink and says, "Yeah, no problem, Evans."

My expression passive, I give him the most infinitesimal smile I can muster and touch his hand ever so slightly. "Okay."

We are having a Moment; I am almost positive we are. Yet, in this peculiarly intimate little place out of time in the middle of a corridor normal people pass through everyday, I more feel we are suspended in time. Suddenly, our actions and emotions are scattered in a way that defies the laws of space, accidentally being too tender and unsure of how to burn the bridge that has connected us to the other by mistake.

This is a moment of some sort, but it's not a 'moment' in the traditional sense. So it's a Partial-Moment – a moment that means something, but not in the way it should.

I think? Maybe?

I don't know. But since when have I ever known anything that matters?

So, gathering the last reserves of courage I have power over, I lick my lips quickly, and suggest, "We have only five more minutes of patrol. Would you like to call it a night and head in a bit early?"

James checks his watch with a jolt, as though he's only just remembered where we are and what we're doing, and nods, his eyes somewhat clear but not all the way yet. "Yeah, that sounds good," he agrees. "Should we go to our dormitory then?"

"Erm…yes," I say, deciding to put off this retelling of events to Ainsley for tomorrow. "Yes, I'll go with you to the dormitory."

"Cool," James says amiably. "Let's go."

"Sure, let's go."

"Okay."

Blubbering like the young teenagers we have suddenly morphed into at this convenient moment, we both blush outrageously and start off towards the moving staircase that will take us up to the seventh floor.

We don't speak on our expedition and we don't speak once we reach our portrait. We simply climb inside, James inelegantly allowing me to go first, and we go our separate ways, getting ready for bed and shouting goodnights across our tiny room that feels like the Alaskan tundra.

However, as tired as I might've been earlier, I'm not tired anymore, and I lay in bed for several hours despite how much I'm going to regret this later. My mind whirling with thoughts that I both want to steer clear of and heavily challenge, I don't go to sleep for a long time, my body simply unable to accept any semblances of rest when I'm so confused.

But, judging from the lack of snoring from the other bed in this dormitory, I know I'm not the only one who's staring restlessly at the ceiling tonight.


	8. Going

"_A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked."_

_-- Bernard Meltzer_

* * *

I don't get a chance to discuss my evening in James's company with Ainsley in the morning, because she's in a pissy mood (she wants to go to Zonko's but can't – which is causing her pain since she wants "a few balloons to bust up") and her sausage eating consumption when she's pissed renders me completely speechless.

A note during class is not even an option because I need to tell her all my agonized thoughts in person. So, I have to wait until school is over for the day before Ainsley is calm enough to go up to her dormitory with me and pay my story some attention.

I manage to get her in thoughtful-listening-mode by telling her it involves Michael in a negative light, and at once, she is in business.

Figures.

So, instead of doing our plentiful homework, Ainsley and I sit on the beds upstairs and I tell her about my musings this week – about Michael and I being rocky. I purposely leave the part about our night in Michael's dormitory out of it, but the rest of it I explain with great detail, especially the previous evening with James.

Ainsley is a good audience for once, paying solid, entirely focused attention to what I have to say, and she doesn't interrupt me until I'm done and look to her for her opinion.

"So what should I _do_?" I ask her desperately. "I love Michael, you know I do, but how can I keep things normal when I think like this? I feel _dishonest_, not telling him how I'm feeling."

Ainsley's gray eyes are murky as she chews the inside of her lip, contemplative. "Lils, honestly, I don't know what to say," she says as gently as someone like Ainsley can muster. "I mean…what do you want me to do, scare away the monsters in your head and say it's all better? This isn't something I can magically solve for you. _You _have to do it."

"But _what _do I have to do?" I persist. "I don't know, I really don't. Help me. I'm not like you, Ains – I can't just _get down to it _and find some kind of arrangement like you can."

"Of course I'll help you," Ainsley says. "What kind of a friend would I be if I didn't? It's just…Lils, this is out of my wavelength. This is something I don't understand – mostly because I think Michael is a dork and I could never put up with him for a minute let alone a year – and I dunno, I think you'll have to find it in you to _get down to it_."

Ainsley has never been physical, in the sense that she doesn't require (or like) hugs or being next to someone when they talk, so it really surprises me when she oh-so-carefully tucks my hair behind my ear. "But if you want my take on it, I'd say that if you're not comfortable with Michael anymore, break up with him."

"Break up with him?" I almost leap to my feet, but don't because I clamp my hands forcefully to my knees. "Ainsley Catherwood, how can you even try to suggest something like that? Breaking up with Michael is completely out of the question!"

"Why?" Ainsley tests me. "Why are you with him?"

"I love him," I say automatically.

"I already told you once, I don't think you love him the way a girlfriend would," Ainsley says wisely. "I mean…to me, it sounds like you're reciting a fact when you say you love him, you know?"

"Well, because I am," I say defiantly. "It's a fact that I love him."

"No, I don't mean it like that," Ainsley says, waving me aside with her hand. "I don't know…like, it sounds like a fact you might deliver for a Transfiguration N.E.W.T. or something. All scholarly, no emotion besides a conviction that you want to mean it. Wanting to mean it and _really_ meaning it are so different, Lils, and I think you fall into the former category."

"This is absurd," I say miserably. "I love Michael. I do. You have to believe that."

"I want to, but I don't," Ainsley says, her eyes regretful. "Lil, this is…look, this is why I can't help you! You are biased because you're his girlfriend, or whatever. I could also be considered biased, because I never liked him to begin with. But really, Lils, this guy isn't it. I've told you that so many times, but I'm dead honest, it's true."

"He _is _it," I shoot back at her, feeling like Ainsley has launched a thousand arrows into my spirit. "Ainsley, I love Michael, and I don't want to break up with him."

"Then tell me, why do you feel like something's not right?" Ainsley asks, her voice rather small under my desperate vehemence. "Why are we even having this conversation, Lily, if he makes you so happy?"

"Because I don't know how to be happy!" I abruptly burst out, astonishing myself when I realize my eyes are lined with tears. "Because I desperately want to know what it is about me that deprives me of anything that's worth something in my life!"

A tear escapes my eyelid and rolls down my cheek, getting into the chapped cracks of my lips. My sudden tears shock Ainsley, who is looking just as uncomfortable as she always does when I get emotional.

Ainsley is so used to _me _being the solid one that seeing me break down this way over a boy she doesn't even like is doing a number on her; and this thought – this last thought – finally shatters whatever of me was still trying to hold together.

I don't cry, but I do feel like something has erupted from the most arcane parts of my being, and I curl up, hugging my legs, on the soft bed I'm sitting on.

Ainsley does not come to me here, choosing to remain on her own bed, but her eyes never leave me as I lay my cheek on my knees.

And then she says, "I think the reason you think you can't be happy is that you don't know what happy _is_."

Somehow stung by this, I snap, "And what do _you_, Queen of All Things Pessimistic and Dark, consider happiness to be?"

I know I'm scratching at sore, easily bloodied wounds here, but how can I be sympathetic to my best friend when I'm already bleeding here in front of her?

It's such a repulsive thought, but I can't stop it from poisoning my mind anyway; I want to hear her answer. So I make myself watch as Ainsley swallows, her features shrinking into her face because I am the only one who can make her feel bad about anything, and says almost inaudibly, "Because happiness is subjective."

"Subjective?" I quire too loudly than what this situation calls for.

"Yes, subjective." Ainsley clears her throat and says, her voice a little stronger, "Because I'm happy when I'm just lingering, doing nothing more than what I feel like doing, and perceiving the world the way I want to perceive it; whereas _you _are only happy when you are in control."

"In control?" I repeat dumbly.

Ainsley nods. "Because even though we both seek the truth, I am content with knowing, but you are only content when you're looking for it."

"So…you're saying that if I'm at peace, I will never be happy?" I ask, bewildered.

In a rare mood, the muscles in Ainsley's face barely move as she nods solemnly and says, "That's exactly what I mean. And Michael is your speed bump, Lils. He has to go."

--

My conversation with Ainsley – which didn't go at all the way I'd hoped it would – continues to hover over me, like so much else, for the better part of the next few days.

After all she's said to me, she does give me my space as I attempt with limited success to sort through my muddled thoughts. I don't have much time to do that, to be honest; with my schoolwork that I don't do, I'm kept up much later than I'd like, and I have patrolling with James on top of that.

When I'm not doing those two things, I'm spending time with Michael – although that's not going too well either, because I'm so busy. But Michael takes it in stride, until tonight.

I'm sitting in the common room when he comes to me, my mind in every place but the one in my work, and his unexpected company startles me when he smiles and sits across from me.

"Hey, Lils," he says, leaning over and kissing me on my lips. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," I say robotically, giving him as pleasant a smile as I can produce on such short notice. "Only working on this." I gesture at my Charms essay.

"I know." He takes a breath. "Hey, do you have a minute? I wanted to talk to you."

"Yeah, sure," I say, setting aside my quill, facing him properly. "What's up?"

"Nothing much for me, really," Michael says. "I only wanted to check on _you_. You're looking so tired again, and you've been kind of distant with me since…since we…"

"Yeah, that," I finish hastily for him, my heart rate going up considerably. "Well, I'm all right, Michael. Only a bit on the industrious side with all this work."

"Are you…avoiding me?" Michael asks, pink with embarrassment but holding my line of vision nonetheless.

"Me? Avoiding you? No, of course," I say a little too fast. "Why would I avoid you?"

"That's why I'm here," Michael says. "Why would you?"

I purse my lips, but try to keep the rest of my expression steady. "I dunno…but there's nothing wrong with me, or anything, if that's what you want to know."

There he goes, being my guardian angel again. I can't for the life of me figure out why I'm bothered again, but for Michael's sake, I try to silence the impulse. What had I discussed with Ainsley? I love Michael, and I'm just bad at showing him so.

Yes, that was it.

So, when Michael smiles at me like he's convinced (even though I'm not), I smile back and I say, "I'm going to my dormitory in about five minutes, all right? I just want to finish this first."

"Fair enough." Michael is back to his normal, contented self at once, soothed by my response, and he disappears up to his dormitory, leaving me here before I disappear to my own.

The common room is silent once again, but Ainsley's voice comes back to me, making me shiver in the unearthly stillness I'm engulfed in:

_He has to go._

But I don't want him to go.

Do I?


	9. Confessing

**A/N: Ooh, now I get to post my favorite chapter in the story! Yay!! I think you guys will like it, because there's plenty of James in it. Enjoy!**

* * *

_Get up, get out, get away from these liars  
'Cause they don't get your soul or your fire  
Take my hand, knot your fingers through mine  
And we'll walk from this dark room for the last time_

_-- Snow Patrol, Open Your Eyes

* * *

_

I spend a couple more days stewing over my relationship with Michael, but by the third day, I've had enough of my stewing.

I'm tired of stewing, so I stew about hating my stewing. Then I stew over how much I hate everything about my ordeal, before I finally lose it.

Something must be done.

James and I have had no more Partial-Moments during our patrols. Ainsley is still eating the world's sausage population with no sign of letting down or of giving me puzzling bits of wisdom that keep me up at night. Michael is giving me the space he thinks I need. My homework is not so kind.

Everything is empty again. Just like sixth year was. And it's driving me mad.

I'm crabby. Ainsley knows as much and James doesn't ask, but I know they've both picked up that something is too wrong with me to ignore. James looks at me sometimes when he thinks I can't see him. He's worried. He should be.

Michael is the only one who has no idea how I'm feeling, but I put this down to my own lack of communication.

Michael has already seen me at my worst. He doesn't need to see that part of me again. I'll feel smothered instead of freely comforted, I know it, so I keep my angst to myself… until I do until my patrol with James today, that is.

Patrols have been quieter lately but tonight, my frustration kindles a flame of daring as I wander the empty halls with James Potter.

So, going with my instinct, I boldly ask through the silence on our second lap around the fifth floor, "Potter, what is your opinion on my dating Michael Davies?"

James looks at me strangely when I ask this, of all things, but his answer shows none of his wonder as he smoothly says, "I'm guessing this is regarding one of those personal matters you wouldn't tell me about before?"

"Again, you've guessed me right," I accept. "So answer the question. What is your brutally honest opinion?"

James swallows, taking a moment to consider, before he says, "I don't think it's my place to be judging your relationship with someone else."

"But I'm asking you," I say with a bite of impatience. "So yes, it is your place. You'd be denying a woman her request if you didn't reply."

"Fair enough." James coughs. "But I don't know why you're asking _me_, of all people, this sort of an opinion question. Courtesy questions are acceptable, but…"

"That's a valid point," I say. "The reason I'm asking you this is because…well, because other than Ainsley and Michael, you spend more time with me than anyone else. You're the Head Boy, I'm the Head Girl. There has to be some level of personal trust that goes into that."

"You trust me?" James sounds oddly as though he's afraid to believe this.

"Yes," I confirm. "So tell me…what do you think of me and Michael? Without any kind of censoring, if you will."

"Without any kind of censoring…" James muses upon this. "All right, fine. Far be it from me to deny a woman her request, eh?"

I only look grimly at him, so he goes back to the train of thought he had previously been following, his eyes faraway for a few seconds.

Then –

"Evans, I really don't think you and Davies are a good match," James informs me simply, regarding me seriously with those penetrating eyes of his.

"Oh, _do _you?" I ask, jumping right to the defensive when I hear this horrible truth I'm getting a lot lately, my hands on my hips as my own eyes narrowing at his blatant opinion.

"Yes, I do," he confirms with almost outrageously resigned shrug. "I don't think you belong together."

"You're horrible," I almost accuse him, stung by his quiet assurances regarding my love life. "As if you could decide we're wrong for each other!"

"Well, you asked me my opinion, and so I gave it!" he defends himself in ire. "What, did you expect me to say something different?"

"No, I wanted the truth," I say.

"So I gave it," James says back, his eyes darkening.

"But…he's my boyfriend," I say, now dipping into wild uncertainty, my various, concentrated shades of emotion flashing before my eyes. "How can we not belong together? We've been with each other for an entire year."

"I know," James says. "But that's what I think."

"Why do you think that?" I almost whisper, terrified already of what he is going to say.

James exhales roughly now, that intensity of his coming back into his face as he rumples his hair like he does when he's nervous. "It's…_complicated_…"

"Complicated is a placeholder's word, a government word," I shoot at him. "It's what people say when they don't want to say how they feel."

James doesn't appreciate my interrogation, and it's obvious in the way he sort of purses his lips at me, but he says, "Fine. You want to know why he's rubbish for you?"

"Yes, I do," I confirm, a mad sheen in my eyes and tone.

"Well, it's because…because I think you're too good for him," he bursts out after a moment or two. "Because I think he's superficial, absorbed in his work, and could never love you the way you deserve."

He pauses and then continues, his tone hard and powerful to my frozen form, "Because you're so lively, vivacious, quirky, and stunning for all that you are, and you can do better than Michael Davies. You have too much fire in you, fire that you shouldn't have to be slaked just because you are with someone who wouldn't be able to handle the burns."

He grabs my shoulder and gives it the smallest of squeezes, an astonishing amount of confidence in the otherwise informal gesture.

"Because you're beautiful. Because you are Lily Evans," he finishes with complete somberness, but garlanded with compassion only he can properly muster, "and you deserve more, so much more, than someone like him."

I bite at my lip, biting it until I can feel the blood well up under the skin, my eyes strangely bitter and suspicious as I watch him consider me. His earnest words hurt, hurt much more than it should, purely because we have a History. A History full of broken promises, unbearable rows, cruel words and blind teenage zeal, a History that undermines everything we do, everything we say, because those were things we've said and done that we can't take back.

It's a History that I can't ignore, a History that haunts me like a vengeful phantom. It's pounding on my head like one of Ainsley's cherry seeds, asphyxiating me to the point where I can't breathe right because this is the first time he's said something to me that suggests some of that care I've wondered about might still be buried inside of him.

I can't take this spontaneous risk he's taken, revealing these sensitive feelings to me. I can't take the idea of our History coming back into conversation, much as I long to discuss it somehow.

I'm gutsy tonight, but not this gutsy – this is so much more than what I bargained for. It's as simple as that.

So I don't take it. I only survey him, allowing my stare to soften some under his obvious potency and the heaviness to his unpretentious words, and when I've sufficiently cleared my throat, I say, "T-thank you for your honesty."

"Don't mention it," James murmurs. "But while we're on this topic, Evans, you might as well be honest as well, and tell me what you were so wound up over before, with Davies."

"It's not important," I mumble.

"It _is_ important," James disagrees, his eyes like fire as they bore into mine, refusing to calm down at all.

"It's not," I insist. "I mean…really, Potter, what do you want me to say to you about my boyfriend?"

"Say what you feel," he says. "I'm not the enemy. I'm on your side. Like I said, I think you deserve more than this – so let me try to help you. But I only can if you'll let me."

I can barely swallow, my throat is so clogged. "I…I dunno," I try to stutter. "I…Michael and me, we're…we're fine, but I'm not, and I don't know…I just, I don't feel…I don't feel like it's…it's _right_. And that scares me…and I don't want to feel like that…and I don't even know why I'm t-telling you this, because it's completely irrelevant to this conversation…"

"It's completely relevant," James tells me, scaring me with that look of unadulterated _care _on his face. His perpetually-jokey and light-hearted front from this past year has vanished here, in this Moment we're having, leaving me with the intense boy I thought he had left behind as a child.

The intense boy I couldn't handle.

"Evans, I don't know anything about your relationship," he continues, his tone and face unchanging. "I'll acknowledge that – I know nothing. But what I do know is that if you're not happy, then you should leave him. Leave him because you_ deserve to have everything_. Never settle for anything less than that."

"Ainsley has been saying that since I started dating him," I admit tearfully, distraughtly, unsure why I chose to share this bit of information with him.

"Well, then maybe Ainsley is on to something here," James suggests fiercely. "Maybe that should show you that someone else shares her opinion, giving her some credibility."

"I tell Ainsley this whenever she voices her opinions, so I'll tell you now too," I say, my voice trying so hard to rise with resentment. "I like Michael, Potter. I like him a lot, and he's been my boyfriend for a full year. We know where the other person is coming from, and I would trust him with my life. It's my relationship; I want to maintain it, because I believe in it. I don't need you, or her, to try convincing me otherwise."

"For whose sake?" James demands. "At what cost?"

"For _our _sake," I say passionately, those tears of mine brimming again in my eyelids, obscuring my sight. "I want to maintain our relationship, but I don't know what's wrong with _me_. I'm _not _as wonderful as you've thought I was, Potter, and he's the only one who makes me feel like I have a _chance_. Like I can _be _someone. He loves me. I _owe _him this much, to keep us together, and not break him because of my own stupidity."

I don't know where these words are coming from, but wherever I'm finding them, they're true, and I throw them at him with as much heart as I have in me, sure that I look beastly with all the unruliness raging through me at hot, high speeds, but I don't care about that. All I care about is saying what I need to _make _him get, and it seems like this isn't working as well as I thought it would.

"So when does it stop?" James says back just as passionately, a pained edge to his tone now. "What do you owe him, and when will it be done, Evans?"

"He _saved _me, Potter," I say, my voice breaking. "In sixth year, I hit rock bottom, I really did, and he pulled me back up. He was so patient and so kind and so brilliant to me; how can I not owe him for putting me together again?"

"So you think you owe him your well-being?" James roars, angrier and fuller than I've ever seen him. "He's holding you down, goddamn it! Why are you letting him?"

"He's keeping me afloat," I shout back. "I would _have _no well-being if it wasn't for Michael Davies!"

"Maybe at one point he did help you, but Merlin, Evans, you can't live like this!" James tells me, the pressure of his sweaty hands on my small shoulders, his poignantly expressive face so close to mine that our breath mingles – like mine used to do with Michael's.

"Break it off. You _know_ you aren't right with him, because that's what this is, isn't it? Not being protected in his arms as you want to be. Not loving him the way you want to. You don't belong to Michael; not now, not ever."

This sentence ringing in my ears like the loudest slam of a drum, I realize all at once that this was how it had been that night with Michael too; now, of the times it could have been, James just feels inexplicably _real_ to me, as we stand here facing one another with our raw wounds out on display.

He is a real person, a real man, with real hopes and feelings and ambitions and ability to love, love, love like crazy, and care about me. There is _life _behind those hazel eyes I've been avoiding searching; _life _to the way he is looking at me now, with all those long-buried emotions out in the open; _life _to how he is pursing his lips, rumpling his hair, fidgeting in his nervousness.

It's like he's glowing on the inside, a glow I've either missed completely or chosen to overlook, and this queer realization deep within my bones startles me, shakes me, makes me dizzier than I can say.

There are two very real men in my life that are confusing the hell out of me, and they seem to hold the saddest, most ruined parts of me in their hands – Michael who nurses my broken side, and James who toys with my wild side.

When they both know me so well, how am I supposed to listen to one over the other?

So, my head so full I want to explode into a hundred pieces and keep them all separated, I say, my voice too shaky to be as rebellious as I want it to be, "While I appreciate your concern in my love life, I think I'm old enough to make these decisions on my own. I'm fine. You don't have to interfere, because I've got things under control."

"It's a little late for that, I'm afraid," James shoots at me, rumpling his hair again as he maintains his stony, aggrieved expression. "I'm in too deep now. I can't get out of the situation."

"What do you mean?" I demand, not bothering to hide my extreme bafflement. Everything feels extreme right now.

"I mean, it's not just your secret anymore," he clarifies, his tone so raw and pure it makes what's left of my already punctured insides ache. "I've also got a share in your problem now. We're in it together, and it's my problem too. The 'you jump, I jump' theory."

"Well, I give you permission to jump then, because it's never been your problem," I inform him grimly, my voice so strained. "I'll deal with Michael on my own, if you please."

I half-expect him to oppose me, to bring back that tumultuous wave of emotion we've just surfed through, but he doesn't.

Instead, his face cools all the way down, the feelings we were both relaying to each other with such might melting away like ice cream on a summer's day, leaving only a severe, disappointed exterior behind on James's face.

My heartbeat still erratically in places it should not be, my breaths come out labored and uneven, I watch as he clears his throat and rumples his hair one final time.

"Fine," he then says, eyes glinting along with his manner. "But, before we drop this argument and leave patrolling early, I want you to remember this, if you remember nothing else from this conversation: This is _your _life, Lily. _Yours_. Live it as you want, but know – this is _reality_ you're in. It's not child's play anymore, and it never will be."

My heart feels like it's going to jump through my suddenly-marshmallow-soft bones and bleed itself out on the ground, it's so packed up with things I don't ever want to experience again.

Because of this, I have nothing left to say. I can only stand there, wounded and marred beyond his wildest dreams, ready to fall down and stay there forevermore.

He watches me only a moment, his eyes smarting as much as mine are from our exchange, before he finally concludes our patrolling duties tonight by turning and walking away in the direction of the seventh floor.

I wait there for a few minutes to give him a head-start, and then I follow after him, stumbling and half-blind and quivering like a frostbitten person; I don't go to our dormitory, but I do go to Ainsley's, where she is still awake. The look on her face when I walk in looking the way I do, hiccupping and holding back fraught animal tears, is unexplainably worried.

Without a word, she rushes over to me and hugs me tightly against her skinny little body, her arms holding me close despite the fact that I vaguely remember she doesn't like hugs. But she feels too good for me to pass up, so I let her embrace me, and I let myself go.

It is only here, on the haven of Ainsley's shoulder, that a chance and completely useless scrap of information comes back to my dazed and broken-down mind:

Tonight, for the first time in the whole length of time he's known me, James Potter called me Lily instead of Evans.

And this simply gets the waterworks going to such a frighteningly high point that I just surrender myself utterly to my oblivion.


	10. Cracking

**A/N: This story is twelve chapters, so I feel the need to tell you that after this one, there are only two more. Woaw, right? Well, just try to enjoy these last few crazy chapters, and maybe leave me an opinion because you know I thrive on those. Thanks!**

* * *

"_My fingertips are holding onto the cracks in our foundation  
And I know that I should let go,  
But I can't."_

_-- Kate Nash, Foundations_

* * *

At some point in the night, when the sky seems to twist and bend outside the girl's dormitory window, I fall asleep with my head on Ainsley's shoulder and her arms around me.

When I next wake up, the sun is up, and somehow, Ainsley – the heaviest, latest sleeper to exist in the history of the earth – is already up and dressed, sitting next to me. The dormitory is empty. I am curled up on the end of her bed, wearing what I'd had on yesterday, a blanket imprint on my cheek, my hair sitting on my head in a mop of red curls.

"Shit, Ainsley, I'm so sorry," I mutter, rubbing my eyes. "I didn't mean to camp out here."

"It's fine," Ainsley says, her eyes never leaving mine.

"Where is everyone?" I wonder aloud, trying to tame my hair.

"Breakfast," she answers me. "We have about an hour before class. Mary Macdonald wanted to know why you were here, but I told her not to worry about it. You had your reasons."

"Thanks," I say earnestly. "Really, thanks for everything, Ains."

"It's no big deal," she waves it off, grabbing a rubber band from her bedside table and tying her sleek black hair back with it. "Do you want to borrow our shower here, or do you want me to take you back to your dorm?"

I open my mouth, but Ainsley finishes, "I heard James Potter in the common room with his Marauders, being loud-arse bastards as usual, and they went down to breakfast. He's not going to be there."

How well she knows me.

I smile gratefully. "Okay then; in that case, I'll go to my dorm."

"Right." she gives me a ghost of her signature smirk and says, "So I'll see you in first period? Maybe at breakfast?"

"Did you not mass murder your sausages today?" I ask.

Ainsley snorts. "Not yet. But I will."

"Enjoy yourself." I nearly hug her, but she won't like that; so I smile as sincerely as I can, and I say, "Later, yeah?"

"Sure. Later," Ainsley smiles back and gives me a little wave.

I nod and leave her dormitory for my own, reflecting in my individual, tacit way on the events of last night's big event with James – his words, despite what he expected, are deeply embedded into my mind, and I can't stop thinking about them and what they are/supposed to mean.

Honestly – he called me Lily. What should I think about that? He never calls me Lily. Only Ainsley and Michael call me Lily, and before Michael, it was only Ainsley. Never James. Not even when he was "in love" with me.

That clearly means he was serious about what he was saying – dead serious.

And that's the part that confuses me, because all the things he was saying revolved around me being too good for Michael. He said I was full of fire, and that Michael couldn't love me – that I could do better than him.

How many times has Ainsley said almost these exact words, and how many times have I actually listened to her? What about _James _opened my ears to criticism towards Michael?

It's not right. But who said life was about things being right?

James wasn't supposed to mean anything to me. He hadn't. Michael had been my number one – the person I woke up in the morning for, the person I gravitated to. I'd barely said four words to James in sixth year, but I'd thought plenty about him.

Wondering what he was doing. Wondering if he thought about me too. Wondering if there was a girl who loved him, now that he was free of me. Wondering where all our childish innocence had gone, leaving us in this adult mess I don't want to clean up.

I never wondered about Michael. Michael was _there_, so undemanding and devoted, and so lovely for it, and yet I couldn't _click_ with him.

Not like I click with James – like I click in those rows we have, those fights we deflect, those things we say that make the other person rethink and reconsider before going at it again.

Maybe it's not clicking, but it's something. What had James called it once?

_Chemistry_.

Do Michael and I have chemistry?

I'd like to think we do, but do we?

The fact that I have to ask this question probably serves as my answer; we aren't the kind of people to have chemistry. We are the kind of people who rely on physics – and by physics standards, the safe laws that have been proven a million times over, we are perfect.

But what about chemistry?

I can't forget about the chemistry.

It's essential, it is the reason most of physics exists. Chemistry has to bind us, and physics move us.

Chemistry doesn't bind Michael and I, but physics has us together, our velocity at a perfect rate as we stroll through our couple-hood.

What should determine a relationship – turbulent chemistry, or serene physics?

As the hot water from the shower I can't remember starting begins to make steam rise and my eyes close, I figure that although it burns me and pains me and slaughters me, as well as everything I stand for, I know Ainsley and James (but mostly James) are, unfortunately, right-on.

I can't be happy unless I'm in motion, with more velocity than physics can give me, and I need _more _than this.

I need a love that lets me chase it, never too far behind but never right up there either, and not a love that will carry me marriage-style to the end of the sunset.

That night, Michael had not been the one to force me to do anything I didn't want to do, but perhaps that was the problem.

He _never _forced me – never pushed me, never argued much with me, never did anything out of line for fear that it would make me upset.

He had always been happy taking things the way I wanted them to be taken. In sixth year, that had been a blessing, because not even I had known what I wanted – but what I _needed_ had been Michael's patience, his obedience, everything about him that kept me grounded and safe and home somewhere.

But I'm not that girl anymore. I'm back on my feet, the feisty thing I've been a hell of a lot longer than I've been ruined, and I need _more_ than that.

I can't handle his simplicity anymore, horrible as that sounds. I can't handle how sweet and dependable he is, how he keeps our pace of life akin to strolling idly in a park.

I _don't _stroll idly in parks. I've never been able to. I need to break into a run every so often – because even though my breath will catch and my legs will ache and my lungs will threaten to tear, that's how I like it.

Hadn't that quiet in sixth year taught me anything? When things are fast, as they were in fifth year, I flourish; I flourish because I'm far too restless to be contained, and the reckless speed is the only thing that quenches those uncontrollable parts of me. When things are not fast, I start to fester; I start to question and ponder and lose my mind because some people are simply not meant to take things easy.

I am one of them. Michael is not. There lies the problem between us – the reason for my unsteadiness the night we made love, and all the nights after it.

Before, I had been under the delusion that we were safe, that we only needed to be a carefree, good-natured couple that was more friendly than anything else. Now that Michael has tried to deviate from a pace I wasn't comfortable with from the start, and an unexpected body of mass is next to me on a path that is supposed to be run alone, I know after some brainwaves that I wanted to flee that it is time for us to separate.

It's not that I never loved him. I did love him, as I told Ainsley and James. I loved him deeply; just not in the way he deserves. Just not in the way _I _deserve.

We are two wildly different people, and when we began going out, I thought that was going to be the thing to rescue me from the darkness in myself. But it turns out that I was wrong, more wrong than I could have imagined:

Because light can only make the darkness go away for as long as it's there. The only way to _really _vanquish the darkness for good is to confront it – to find the roots of it, to tackle it like in a good rugby game, to meet it head-on in the damn ugly middle.

And the only way to meet it in the damn ugly middle is to find another who is like you – who has demons, who can keep up with your sprint at the wildest of paces, who is ready to bring you into them and face both of your demons together.

That person for me isn't Michael; and as much as it tears us up, I'm going to have to tell him the truth some time soon:

That he isn't enough for me. That I'm not enough for him. That we're never going to be enough for each other, no matter how hard we try.


	11. Readying

_I want so much to open your eyes  
'Cause I need you to look into mine_

_Tell me that you'll open your eyes_

_All this feels strange and untrue  
And I won't waste a minute without you_

_-- Snow Patrol, __Open Your Eyes

* * *

_

When I come to breakfast, and when I go through the whole day today, I don't mention my musings, or my terrible plan conceived this morning.

Ainsley can tell that something's up (of course she can) and she does ask me during lunch if something's up, but I only tell her that I can't forget my conversation with James as easily as I want to – which is the truth, but not the whole of it. But, Ainsley knows better than to press me, so she only nods and continues to eat and change the subject, her gray eyes worried but peaceful; she knows I'll work it out on my own, and she won't stop me.

Like Michael, she thinks I need space. Unlike Michael, however, she doesn't skirt around me like I'm a leper – if anything, she's even nearer to me, just in more subtle ways than her usual Ainsley-ness. I appreciate it more than I can say.

But, watching everything unfold as it is, in the midst of our quiets and our giving-me-space and our unspoken conversations, I wonder how much I truly regret the conversation I'd had with James the other day.

Maybe I hadn't wanted to hear it, but hadn't it been important to me? Hadn't it made such the massive, boundless difference I necessitated so explicitly? Weren't those things you didn't want the things that you needed most?

It was the biggest shake-up I'd ever experienced; because all of a sudden, in the middle of my standstill life, something extraordinary took place. Like a shooting star lighting up the sky; like a sole flower growing in a barren field; like the first snow of the winter sprinkling with heavenly leisure down to earth's vast exterior, he threw me for the spin he hid from me for a year and a half, and I heartily welcome the change – or, the reverting back to old times.

And, I think to myself as I sit here in class next to Ainsley, that's why I'm going to do it, after my patrol with James tonight. I'm going to tell Michael that we're done, that we're finished, that we can't be together anymore.

I'll be as gentle as I can, but these are things that must be said.

I am done with my hazy mundanity – I am done with being anything less than me. Remaining unsaid is going to do me no good, and that's why I'm going to do it.

Because I'd rather he hated me for living up the truth than try to perform CPR on a relationship that had been dying on us anyway.

--

When I meet James for the patrol in the common room, I'm not surprised to see him a little tense leaning against a sofa, his eyes on the floor and his normally loose mouth tightened with thought.

With the fire playing gold shadows against his well-boned face, he looks more pensive than ever, the flames flickering in his eyes. I'm nervous about clearing my throat to announce my presence.

"Ready to go?" I ask with uncharacteristic timidity.

James jumps upon seeing me, and says, "Yeah, okay. Let's go."

"Okay." I make my way to the Portrait Hole as he does the same, him awkwardly letting me go first because we're not at our old point, where we could teasingly climb in one after the other without a single doubt in our heads. When we're both out, we set off down the corridor together.

I'm at a loss for conversation, as we go, all business when we used to be all friendly. I knew this would happen. I knew we wouldn't know what to say. I knew we would be caught in this hideous deadlock we're currently in.

But, what I hadn't known was that we wouldn't _remain _in our deadlock – that James would be the one to break it with one of his calmly monumental questions.

"So, Evans," he says, being careful to use my last name instead of my first. "I was wondering…"

"Yes?" I'm so grateful I'm not the one changing this atmosphere – which is thicker than cold custard after Petunia's done with it – that I sound almost over-eager to hear what _James Potter_ is wondering. That says something big about my nerves, I think.

James, too, is a bit taken aback by my over-eagerness, but he takes it in stride as he continues, "So I was wondering, Evans…why did you ask me that question about you and Davies yesterday, if my answer upset you so much?"

Only James would ask me this type of question the day after a titanic explosion. He's never been one to beat around the bush – and right now, I can't decide if I like this or not.

And, because I can't decide, my lips keep opening and closing like a goldfish's as I attempt to construct a response that will not embarrass me further. James must think I'm mad – and if so, he's right.

Eventually, though, I do say, "Erm…I'm not quite sure. I suppose I only wanted to get your opinion on the matter."

"Why would you want my opinion?" James wants to know at once. "We never talk about our girlfriends or our boyfriends."

"You have a girlfriend?" This is news to me. I can't say why it hurts me so much.

But, I cool down when James shakes his head, some ancient grief in the way he averts his eyes from mine – because he knows I might see something he doesn't want to expose in them. "No, not anymore. I broke up with Georgina Clark a month and a half ago."

He did? And he never told me? I'm hurt all over again.

"I'm so sorry," I say, because there's nothing else to say.

"You shouldn't be," he says. "We agreed it was for the best."

I can think of nothing to say back to this, so I say nothing; after waiting a moment, James clears his throat and says, "But let's not get off the topic here. I want to know why you asked me what you did yesterday."

He's being perfectly light and amiable, so I decide to do the same – why overcomplicate an incident that doesn't need it? That's why I shrug, and say contemplatively, "Well…there really _wasn't_ a reason. I said what I was thinking."

"I think there was reason," James says, pressing in a little harder but not _too _much harder. He's obviously learned from yesterday's mistakes. "Was I right? Was it because you were having issues with Davies you weren't telling him about?"

"My relationship is my business," I say stiffly.

"But I told you – I'm in too deep now," James says. "You can't get rid of me anymore, it's not an option. I'm part of the problem."

He's sort of right about that, but I'm not about to admit it.

"Look, Potter, I don't want to discuss this right now," I say quite impatiently. "You're prying in matters that don't need prying. I don't tell you how to live your life and you shouldn't tell me how to live mine."

"There was a time when you did," James says with such emotion in his voice that I can't stop myself from stopping and facing him properly.

"I did?"

"You did," he confirms, tone unchanging. "You told me to put my tie straight, comb my hair, stop goofing off, do my homework, don't play pranks – don't you remember all that?"

"Of course I do," I say, my voice whisper-thin.

"When you care about someone…you're supposed to help them, to a certain degree, live their lives," he tells me, his eyes smoldering so beautifully my internal organs do their melting thing again. "Because on your own, you're just you…but when you want to be something bigger, something worthwhile, then you do need someone there. Someone you trust, someone you're partial towards."

"And Michael was going to be that for me," I say, my throat aching, my voice almost pleading. "Because I did trust him. I was partial to him." I try to ignore all the past tense in my sentence.

"Look, I know I'm not your favorite person in the world," he says. "And I know you don't think I mean what I say, or that I'm anything more than a prat that used to flirt endlessly with you when we were kids. But no matter what becomes of you, or of me, just know…"

He trails off here, about to say something, but he's waiting for me to say something first – and I don't. I only stare back at him, all the raw emotions I don't want to pay attention to bubbling near my surface again, like they always do when James is being honest with me.

After the explosive conversation of yesterday, it seems a lot of our uncomfortably cordial walls have been torn down, and now he suddenly thinks he can do this; this melting-me-with-his-emotion deal. It's difficult to listen to him, difficult to hear him start to bring about the things we've tried not to speak of, difficult to have us progress forward while Michael and I fall apart, but these events are out of my control. All I can do is swallow my worries down and look at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence.

So, when he's sure I'm listening, he then says with an intimacy that takes my breath away without his even being physically close to me, "Know that even after everything that's happened with us, after everything I've said or you've done, I think you're worthy of more than anyone can give you here – me included. But, if you'll let me, I'll sure as hell give it the best shot I've got, all right?"

It takes me several moments to regain my composure and find my voice, but when I do, I baffle us both by smiling weakly and asking, "Do you say this to every girl you used to fancy?"

To his credit, he smiles as well, and shakes his head a second time. "No, not every girl," he says softly. "Always just the one."

I keep my eyes on the ground like he did before, and I vaguely wonder if there's a spell I can do to make myself melt through the floor and stay there for at least twenty years before I resurface. But there isn't – I know there isn't – so I look up again and see that he's already gone.

I check my watch. Ten o'clock exactly. We have a short patrol today – how perfectly the time seems to work out.

I squeeze my eyes shut and exhale apprehensively, the shockwaves washing over me again. It's time to do my second most-painful thing of the night.

Walking back as slowly as I can, my eyes always on the ground and my hands fidgeting in preparation, I keep my breaths heavy and long…

Here we go again.


	12. Living

**A/N: Yes, this is indeed the last chapter - the big, final chapter that I certainly hope is enough for you lot, lol. I really do hope you enjoy it, and thank you so much for reading this story! It means a lot to me, it really does, and I appreciate every one of you clicking on my link to take a look at the latest update. Normally when I finish a multi-chaptered story, I have a Big Speech for you guys to thank you, but I guess for now, it's just this little paragraph. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate you - it just means I'm lazy, which I most sincerely am.**

**So, I hope you like this final chapter! If you enjoyed this tale, feel free to go through some of my other fics. I have plenty for you to peek at if you're bored and have an hour or two. Thanks again!**

* * *

_And from the first to all the last times, all the signs  
Said 'Stop' - but we went on whole-hearted  
It ended bad, but I love what we started  
It said 'Stop' - but we went on whole-hearted  
It ended bad, but I love what we started_

_-- Fiona Apple, Parting Gift_

* * *

As I expected, Michael is waiting for me in the common room like he does most every other night, reading a book on a sofa even though he looks exhausted.

When I walk in, he smiles. His whole face lights up as he rises and abandons his book, and coming over to hug me. I allow him to, blissfully enjoying the warm weight of his body with mine and trying to make myself focus on the task at hand. It's so hard for me to let him release me, knowing what I'm going to do next.

But I do, I let him, and then I put on my best fake smile – I'm getting better at those everyday.

"Hey, Michael," I begin.

"Hey, Lily," he says back, brushing a lock of my hair out of my eyes. "How was your patrol tonight?"

"Fine, perfectly fine," I lie.

"That's good," he says, unable to sense the lie in my well-covered voice.

"But…I wanted to talk to you about something," I say, my voice catching slightly. Here it comes.

"Yeah, okay," he says obediently. "What is it?"

"I…I think…" I can barely choke _any_ words out, let alone the ones I want. It's like being twelve years old again, unable to collect my thoughts and thinking it would get better as I got older. Look how well that one turned out.

Michael is anxious, though, to see me struggling.

"What is it?" he repeats. "Is something wrong? Did someone say something? Are you hurt?"

These are, of course, the first theories he jumps towards. He's learned, after his experiences with me through sixth year, and I see now that he has learned me wrong.

I'm not always broken. I'm not always sad. I'm not always the frightened, out-of-order girl he had to take care of before. How can he think that's the entirety of who I am? Hasn't he seen how much I've changed?

I know he's trying to be good to me, but this just won't cut it anymore.

"Michael," I say his name, holding his hand in both of mine and stroking it, keeping my voice faint but backed with strength I know I barely possess right now. I can't hold back. It has to be said _now_, and said bluntly, without any mistake, because I'm done making _this _mistake. My heart is palpitating like a horse in a derby in my chest, and when I speak, my voice burns my mouth like acidic poison.

"Michael, I…I don't think that this relationship is the best outlet for us," I finally say, the entirety of my intestines sinking down, down, down, until they surely creep into my pelvic bone. "I don't think it's working out."

"Why isn't it working out, Lily?" Michael demands, not angrily but certainly intensely. He understands immediately the weight of my hesitant words, and his eyes are blazing with fire he's never cared to show me in all the time we've been together.

His hand has freed itself from mine, and is squeezing _me _now; squeezing me as if squeezing it will squeeze some kind of truth he wants to hear out of me too. "Why not? Haven't I told you – and shown you – that I love you? You told me you love me too. What's different now?"

"I just…" I end up admitting, resigned. "I think we've lost it, Michael. Lately, I'm trying to remember all the reasons we were together, and…and I can't make us an argument. I keep feeling…so out of touch. That's a problem for me."

"We haven't lost anything," he tries to tell me. "We're fine, Lily, and we can work this out. You can't bail on me because you feel like you're overwhelmed. I didn't bail on you when you were overwhelmed last year, did I?"

"You didn't, and I will forever cherish that you didn't, but Michael, we _have _lost it," I say, my voice straining, that strength I thought would hold me up crackling from beneath me, threatening to let me fall as I've been afraid of from the beginning. "We're…distant. It doesn't feel right."

"Lily, I love you," Michael says fiercely, leaning in and kissing me with a fervor I would have never deemed him capable of. "I love you, I love you, I love you," he says between deep, imposing kisses. He holds me close, trying to get a reaction out of my lips that lay limp as he unleashes his fervor upon them.

"How many times do you want to hear me say that?" he almost demands. "Because I'll say it, Lils; I'll say it as many times as you ask, because I do love you. I love you so, so much, and the times I've been with you have been the best times of my life. Don't tell me you want to finish it."

He kisses me once more, and then looks at me, searching through me, but there's nothing to search for, nothing he's lost somewhere within my depths. When I look back at him, I look through different eyes – James's eyes, the eyes that have looked at me the way no woman has ever been looked at before – and I try with all I have in me to see things the way he said them.

What had he said? I conjure his face up in my mind's eye, recollect the images of his hazel eyes that had always been so passionate, attempt to recall the conversation we'd had that was about to prove it had the potential to change my life all over again.

_This is your life, Lily. Yours. Live it as you want, but know – this is reality you're in. It's not child's play anymore, and it never will be._

Not child's play anymore. That was it. That was the phrase that had done it.

It's _my _life, and mine alone. Who I spend it with is my choice, so long as I remember that this is not the silly whim of an adolescent – this is it, the life I've been waiting since I was a kid to live and live well. Child's play is no longer an option.

And this – this notion, this epiphany, this truth dropped upon my head by someone I never thought would matter to me – this is the reason why I turn up to look Michael in the eye, my gut already lighter than it's been for weeks, and say with the determined conviction I always associated with headstrong Ainsley:

"I do want to finish it, Michael; because I love you, I need to let you go, because I can't love you like this. I just _can't_."

I can see his heart breaking through his eyes – his emotions were always betrayed there, if I knew that special place I had to look in – and as a result, mine breaks too. He purses his lips, holding himself together the best he can, and I take his hand back, clasping it and wringing it, before giving him a final kiss, which he returns with a strange weight I'm not used to.

It's not heavy, not lusty, none of that. This kiss is almost bittersweet, awkward in a way; it's a kiss of finality, a soft kiss in which our lips caress each other for the last time, a kiss of lovers that will come out of the position as only friends if even that. It's a kiss for the road, a kiss to keep – because we know nothing will ever be the same again.

"I'm so sorry," I whisper into his mouth, the mouth that has coached me through so much in the past year. "But I know you're going to be fine."

And he will be. I know it; for as I leave him, standing there with his every emotion flashing across his sweet face, it is _me_ that is the one to fall apart.

--

When I get back to my dormitory, stumbling slightly with tears prickling at my eyelids but not quite falling yet, I find that James is still there, sitting on his bed, his eyes as distant as ever.

But when I enter the room, and our visions lock together, his eyes are right back to earth as he instinctively stands, reaching an arm out to me. I feel surreal, like I'm in a dream – not quite here, not quite real. I can't take his hand. I don't _want _his hand.

Seeing me stand there, he freezes, moistening his lips for that awkward moment of situation-recognition, before he asks me softly, "Did you do it, Lily?"

Disregarding the second use of my real name in a couple of days, there's no point in denying what I've done, no point in pretending I didn't, but I still don't want to say it aloud. It doesn't feel right, adding that note of finality to my evening's deed. Our relationship has been disintegrating for a while, dying like embers in an unfed fire, but somehow, saying we're broken up doesn't feel right.

I don't feel alone yet; the actuality of my decision – the choice to get rid of a boyfriend I've kept for so long – has not yet sunk in. I'm stuck somewhere between that uneasy realm of 'we' and 'I' and I can't say it.

Not now. Not so soon. Not when I feel broken yet liberated, weightless but buried under the burdens of the entire world.

So when I look back to James, my suddenly parched lips slightly parted as though words are about to climb through them, my eyes glistening, I simply say, "I think so."

The situation is too illusory, unreal – the fact that I am now without a boyfriend, positioned a couple of meters away from James Potter, of all the people I never expected to be close to – that all I can do is rest there, staring at him, wondering how on earth I am still alive and my heart can beat when I feel so much.

But, after what feels like a year or even five, James takes a couple of steps towards me, his eyes unsure, and he reaches his hand to me, his arm connecting the space between us as it has been since we were kids.

When I looked at the expanse between us before, it looked dishearteningly far, a world that could potentially mean everything or nothing at all, a distance I could never cross. But now, as I look at the same bridge I used to burn without a care in the world, it doesn't look as intimidating as it used to.

Now, it looks like a bit of a stretch, but a stretch I can make, if I can make myself believe in the glimmer of hope I had always sort of believed in from the beginning.

So, since I have nothing else left to lose, no place left to hide from myself or from him, I place my hand into his, letting him grasp it as firmly as he promised he would, and I permit him to bring me into him, holding me against his chest, rubbing my back. After a minute or two of this, he even plucks up the courage to kiss me so gently and hesitantly on the top of my head, promising me without words that tomorrow will bring a better day and a new sun to watch soaring across our canvas of sky.

Right now, at the end of one story and the start of another, at this crossroads in my young life, in this place I didn't imagine I'd be in, I sort of know where I want to go, but I also know, with great clarity, where I came from. Those days are over, but they're forever going to be a part of me I can't let go of; and I think, that in this unlikely spot I would never have searched on my own, I've found a new sort of horizon. It's nothing permanent yet, it's not going to bind me or set me free, but it's an idea to see, to consider for the first time in my life.

Something is happening. Even now, I know this much. Something is happening, something is at work, and this isn't the first major change that is going to take place in my adult life. It's only the first.

And so I look up for the briefest second through my red eyes at his face, his steady, well-crafted, admittedly handsome face, and I see in it some of the little kid he'd been before. They're only slight glimmers, because he too has grown up and become a man living his adult life, but I also see a beginning starting to take form somewhere within him.

Maybe one day, we'll stop being this weird pair with a History, and we'll find the courage to break more walls to talk about those taboo things I'd always wanted to discuss.

Maybe one day, I'll trust him the way I used to trust Michael, with everything I have, and we'll at least be close _friends_.

Maybe one day, he'll smilingly tell me a joke and I'll laugh freely and he'll laugh too and we'll be comfortable, mature, able to take our old relationship for what it was and let something new blossom from the ashes.

I know none of this will happen today, as I settle back into his chest, my eyes closed, my body soft and safe and cushioned here against his, but it will happen one day.

And for right now, I believe whatever he's said to me, and that's enough for the time being.

* * *

_I feel like I am watching everything from space  
And in a minute I'll hear my name and I'll wake  
I think the finish line's a good place we could start  
Take a deep breath, take in all that you could want_

_-- Snow Patrol, __Finish Line_


End file.
